Georgie Porgies Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive at this pre-school with incredible enthusiasm and eager to start their day. Upon arrival, they promptly engage with their friends and interact with their designated key person. Staff are consistently warm and attuned to the emotional and developmental needs of the children throughout the day. Consequently, children are exceptionally content, focused and engaged in the stimulating activities prepared by the highly competent staff.

Staff have high expectations for children's behaviour. Children's behaviour is commendable. They consistently engage in play while demonstrating good manners and respect for one another and their surroundings. They actively tidy up the areas they use, ensuring a pleasant and clean environment for their friends to enjoy. This positive behaviour fosters a sense of community and teaches essential social skills and responsibility.

The structure of children's learning is meticulously organised, and transitions between activities occur seamlessly. Throughout the day, children have numerous opportunities to develop their small and large muscles as they engage in activities. For example, they sail on pirate ships, explore insect habitats with magnifying glasses and learn about the life cycle of frogs.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• The pre-school's curriculum and ethos highlight the importance of love and care, fostering a nurturing climate and contributing to children's emotional growth and development. Drawing on Scandinavian concepts, the curriculum is designed to be ambitious. There is a key focus on parental partnership, child-initiated play, high-quality teaching techniques that foster independence and creating a language-rich environment.
• Staff use language techniques that are consistently rich and vividly descriptive, and greatly enhance children's sensory experiences, knowledge and understanding. For example, children use a range of props to role play pirates on the open sea. Staff skilfully encourage children to explore how they can move across the water by asking questions, such as 'are you sailing or cruising while navigating the sea'. This prompts discussions about how different vessels travel the sea.
• The teaching methods used in this pre-school are highly effective. Staff embed interactive, sensory and creative components during their interactions with children. They seamlessly blend art with scientific concepts, making learning both enjoyable and educational. For example, children explore the differences between frogs and toads by using bubble wrap and paint to recreate the warts found on a toad's skin. They engage in discussions about frogs having webbed fingers, unlike human hands. This approach sparks natural curiosity about the world and promotes self-awareness.
• Staff working with younger children prioritise the importance of secure attachments in nurturing environments for young children. They constantly attune to children's immediate interests and needs. For example, when younger children step onto the grass without their shoes, staff ask prompting questions, modelling and demonstrating enjoyment, such as 'can you feel the wet grass on your feet and on your toes'. This leads children to respond by wriggling their toes, giggling and exploring their environment with care.
• As children progress, they develop a remarkable sense of independence. Younger children acquire the skills to open their lunch boxes and serve themselves during snack time, navigating routine activities with incredible confidence. Staff are highly trained in teaching techniques that assist children in mastering challenging new skills independently, such as putting on their shoes and planting tomatoes in the garden. This fosters a sense of confidence and belonging within the pre-school environment. For example, children take pride in demonstrating their personalised pre-school dinosaur eggs to visitors, which they take care of in the absence of their dinosaur parents.
• The manager prioritises staff's professional development, facilitated through regular training days and a buddy system that encourages best practice and ongoing improvement among staff. This commitment has a positive impact on children's experiences across all areas of learning, particularly in their communication and language skills. As a result, the quality of teaching reaches an exceptional standard, enabling children to make significant progress in their learning and development.
• Parents are extremely thankful for the progress and overall well-being of their children since they joined the pre-school. Many parents say that the management where responsive to their individual situations when they first joined. For example, parents who were new to the area expressed their appreciation for the manager's additional efforts to reassure them, taking the time to help them navigate pre-school life that was new to them.