Harlequin Out of School Clubs - Coxheath

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

All children are incredibly confident, settled and happy in the welcoming and stimulating setting. Staff ensure activities and experiences highly motivate children and help them experience awe and wonder. All staff have an outstanding knowledge of how they implement their highly challenging curriculum. Children are incredibly enthusiastic to participate in extremely well-thought-out and planned activities. For example, staff teach children about how to use real tools safely. Children assist staff in using real tools and wood to build a large hut that mimics a hut in a story they enjoy reading. They learn to act out stories on a large scale, using incredible home-made resources and their imagination.

Children are extremely engaged in making up their own games, such as using arches to jump on one end to make objects 'fly' from the other end. The staff build on this incredibly well. For instance, they teach children about the concept of weight distribution, distance and direction. Children are very confident to tell their friends what they have been taught and go on to teach their friends in context with excellent confidence.

All staff are outstanding role models. Children's behaviour is impeccable. They have excellent levels of empathy and kindness. For example, children fully understand that others have differing needs and abilities. They remind each other that some children can hold objects during group times as it keeps them happy and their hands busy. Children develop an excellent understanding of the importance of healthy lifestyles. For instance, they discuss the importance of drinking water so they do not get dehydrated. Children have outstanding opportunities to challenge their physical skills safely. This is evident when they confidently negotiate more-complicated equipment, such as hanging bars and vertical ladders.

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

• The highly knowledgeable and experienced staff are extremely dedicated and passionate in fulfilling their role of teaching children. They are proactive in ensuring they teach children skills to support their future learning incredibly well. For example, all children are extremely independent. They complete their own tasks. The level of persistence and resilience they demonstrate until they achieve their aim is exceptional.
• All staff and children have heartwarming and trusting relationships. Children beam with pride as staff praise them, and they strive to impress staff and their friends. Staff know all children incredibly well. They plan activities that are unique to each child to spark their enthusiasm to learn. Therefore, all children have an extremely positive attitude towards their learning and make rapid progress. This includes children who speak English as an additional language and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).
• All staff, including managers, support children with SEND incredibly well. They attend beneficial training and implement consistent strategies to support children. This includes using visual emotion cards to help children express their feelings. Staff attend specific training to ensure they have the highest understanding to support all individual children. For example, they teach children to have a deeper understanding of their emotions and to be confident to explain how they feel and why.
• Managers and staff establish extremely positive partnerships with parents and keep them incredibly well informed in their children's achievements and next steps in learning. For example, staff routinely share the setting's plans and encourage parents to add to them where they feel beneficial.
• Children of all ages and abilities are extremely confident to communicate their thoughts and ideas. Staff successfully widen children's already vast vocabulary. Children learn new words daily, understand their meaning and use them in context. For instance, children talk about a chair 'reclining', items being 'humongous' and some trees being 'deciduous'.
• Staff support children to gain an outstanding level of respect and understanding of other people from around the world. This includes other cultures, languages and celebrations. For example, children cook food from around the world, such as Portuguese and Asian dishes. Children listen to well-known stories in other spoken languages, such as Italian.
• All staff evaluate their practice together incredibly well. They regularly observe each other teach and interact with children. They use their feedback to set highly challenging targets to further enhance their already impressive practice. The management highlights that they are keen to continue to strengthen their self-evaluation procedures, such as even more coaching and high-quality role modelling to be observed by the entire staff team daily.