Happy Faces Pre School Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff create a warm and nurturing atmosphere in the nursery. This helps children to feel happy, safe and secure. The well-established key-person system helps new children to settle quickly and follow established routines. For example, children voluntarily go to the sink to wash their hands before snack. Staff provide effective support to help children become more independent. Children learn to pour their own drinks and dispose of rubbish. Staff have high expectations of how children should behave. They encourage children to share and take turns in the familiar games they play. Where there are minor squabbles, staff take time to explain how to be kind to our friends. Staff remind children that sand and soil stay down so it does not go in our eyes. This helps children to understand how to keep safe.

All staff are involved in planning a sequenced curriculum, building on the knowledge and skills of children. The curriculum meets the needs of all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). This helps to support the positive attitudes children have to their learning. For instance, they eagerly go with an adult to explore their wild area. Children are excited when they find a leaf with holes that they decide a caterpillar has been eating.

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

• Parents are happy with the provision. Staff support parents to help their children at home. This helps to maintain a consistent approach to aspects of care, such as potty training. Parents are kept informed about the curriculum and the learning and progress of their child through daily conversations.
• Staff identify children who may have SEND and provide effective support. Any concerns are discussed with parents and, where necessary, the advice of external professionals is sought and acted upon. Additional funding is used appropriately to provide good support for children.
• Staff help children to recognise and respect that families are not all the same. Children learn that people beyond their own immediate experience have different beliefs and cultures. For example, children from different backgrounds bring photographs of their families. They talk about their celebrations and sometimes sample the special foods eaten during different festivals.
• Staff observe children and plan suitable activities to help them make good progress. However, there are occasions when children lose interest because activities do not precisely meet their needs. Staff do not have high enough expectations of what children can do and activities do not always challenge their thinking.
• Staff support children in developing strong listening skills. Children listen carefully to a favourite story and excitedly identify the point where they can use cardboard tubes as telescopes to look up and down. This helps to support their understanding of prepositions.
• The physical development of children is well supported. Staff help children to safely negotiate the steps on the pirate ship. Staff provide a range of simple tools to support children in making marks in soil, sand and on paper. This helps to strengthen the fingers of children in preparation for early writing.
• Staff provide resources to help children problem solve. They work together to create an obstacle course. However, some other aspects of mathematical thinking are not as well provided for. For instance, staff are less confident in supporting children's understanding of how to make comparisons between objects, such as when children are observing the snails or playing with the toy animals.
• Staff encourage children to develop communication skills as they engage with children in their play. For example, in the home corner children switch on the oven to cook their play food, discuss the ice-cream flavour and decide on banana porridge for breakfast. In the sand, staff encourage children to explain why the lion is hiding from the snake.
• There are strong links between the provider and other settings children attend. For example, information about the learning and development of children is shared, with parental permission. This helps to ensure a consistency of approach to the learning and care of children.
• Leaders are ambitious and have identified areas they are keen to improve, such as the outside space. They are committed to targeted staff training to help to improve practice. Staff benefit from regular meetings with leaders to discuss their well-being and professional needs.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to focus more consistently on providing experiences that build further on children's existing skills and knowledge to successfully extend their learning
• strengthen staff's skills in helping children gain a broad understanding of early mathematics in preparation for school.