Haughley Pre-school & The Pit Stop Out of School Club

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children happily enter the pre-school room and are warmly greeted by staff. They know the daily routine and independently sit quietly on the carpet. They wait for their turn to find their name to self-register. They very quickly choose resources and happily engage in their play. They work collaboratively and help each other. For example, they carry a small plank together to make a balancing beam. Children make good friends and play together excitedly. They are polite and have good manners. When staff ring the bell, children attentively stop and follow instructions to tidy the toys, demonstrating their good listening.

Children thoroughly enjoy being outside. They like to practise their physical skills with the numerous trikes and cars. Children have good imaginations. They pretend that one of the wooden houses is an 'ice-cream parlour' and call staff and other children to buy an ice cream.

Children have very good relationships with staff and often go to them for a reassuring cuddle throughout the day. They ask staff to read stories and enjoy sitting beside them to play a game. Children are confident and proudly show visitors their pre-school. If they want a resource from the cupboard, they describe what they want staff to get for them.

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

• Children are making good progress in their learning. Staff are clear about what they want children to learn. Each member of staff is responsible for planning for their key children. They identify what children need to work on next and share the information with other staff so everyone can contribute. Staff plan exciting resources and activities that include children's interests as well as working around a theme. The current theme, autumn, allows children to explore a range of different resources such as leaves and conkers, which widens their interests.
• The staff work extremely closely as a team and deploy themselves well to benefit the children. Staff carefully choose when to join in with children's play to model learning effectively. For example, when children build a tower that keeps falling, staff show them an alternative way of building and then step away so that the children can try for themselves. Children are really pleased when they succeed.
• Staff focus on promoting children's independence. They create many opportunities throughout the session for children to practise and develop their skills. At snack time, children pour themselves a drink from a jug, choose their snack, and clear their plate and cup from the table. They are learning to put on their coats and shoes when they go outside. Staff assist children that ask for help, but encourage them to try first.
• Lunch is a sociable time. Staff eat their lunch and chat with the children. They help children to extend their vocabulary by explaining new words. Staff use actions to help non-verbal children to understand and develop their language. Children take an interest in stories and access books throughout the session. They thoroughly enjoy group story time and all actively participate. Children show their excitement as they join in with familiar parts of the story, laughing as they say it together.
• Staff successfully support children's development in mathematics. As a result, children have a good working knowledge of how to use mathematics in context. For example, they enjoy comparing the height of their two towers using the words 'smaller' and 'bigger'.
• Staff inspire children's awe and wonder. Children are fascinated when they find a worm. Staff join in with their excitement, encouraging them to watch and predict where the worm might go next and talking about the worm's habitat. Children refer to a folder with photos of different creatures to help them identify what they have seen.
• Managers track children's development to establish whether all areas of the curriculum are well planned for. They provide parents with termly reports to inform them of their child's development. Staff, however, do not continue to ask parents what children do at home, which limits the information they have to plan for children's learning.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen partnerships with parents to enable staff to continue to gather information to assist them with planning for children's learning.