Hingham Playgroup

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children have a good sense of belonging and happily enter the playgroup. They foster swift and trusting relationships with staff because they consistently show genuine care and empathy towards them. Staff are always attentive and offer the right level of support to ensure all children's emotional security, and well-being is at the forefront. With robust settling-in processes and regular assessments, staff get to know their key children well. This means staff recognise when children may need some extra support. They sensitively work with parents and external agencies to ensure all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, receive effective support to thrive, and achieve their best individual outcomes.

Children have plenty of time and space to explore what interests them. For example, they carefully build towers from magnetic shapes together with their friends. Children love the café, role-play kitchen and share their pretend food with one another. When they occasionally begin to have disagreements with peers in their experimental play, staff promptly notice. They calmly encourage children to use their words to explain why they are upset, and then listen to their peer's point of view. Children demonstrate the effectiveness of this teaching when regularly resolving any peer disputes appropriately themselves.

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

• Overall, teaching is good quality. Staff create stimulating activities based around children's interests, which sparks their curiosity and high engagement. Staff use their knowledge of children's development to provide purposeful, learning experiences that are sequenced and build on what they already know and can do. For example, as children enjoy chopping vegetables with a knife, they are developing hand-eye coordination and building muscles in their arms and fingers that support early writing skills.
• The management committee has supported the manager to continually improve the care provided to children. They have made some improvements since the last inspection, such as providing regular staff supervisions to support staff well-being and help identify any further training needs. However, the management team do not consistently focus enough on monitoring staff's knowledge of how children learn, to ensure staff build on the already good teaching and raise it to an even higher level.
• Independence starts at an early age and young children wash hands often without prompting before eating. Children are developing their independence to support them when they go to school, such as placing their belongings in their individual named trays.
• Children demonstrate increasing awareness of simple mathematical concepts, such as 'big' and 'small' and counting in sequence. Children love to learn about shape and size through fun-filled activities. During a shape matching activity, staff remind children to slow down and take their time to look closely at shapes before posting them in the corresponding shape postbox. This helps children solve problems with increased accuracy. However, occasionally staff do not consistently make the most out of children's natural curiosities during play, to support them to explore their ideas in greater depth.
• Staff are excellent role models and always show respectful behaviours, such as asking if they may join in the children's play. Children emulate these good manners and consistently play cooperatively and develop strong peer friendships. At group times, children confidently demonstrate their understanding of behaviours expected of them, by explaining that 'walking feet' indoors can prevent accidents.
• Healthy lifestyles are promoted very well. Children have lots of exercise and constant access to outdoors. They learn about the world around them, such as exploring life cycles through growing vegetables and flowers from seed. After children finish their snack, they ask to put their fruit peel in the compost bin. This highlights they are recognising ways in which they can play a part in looking after the environment.
• Parents say their children enjoy attending and praise the caring and dedicated staff. They express that they see the progress their children are making, especially in their confidence and speech and language development. Children develop a love of reading and enjoy using the lending library, where they can borrow books to read at home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on existing performance management systems to help raise the quality of teaching to an even higher level
• focus more closely on guiding staff to consistently support children's thinking skills to help them make even more progress in all areas of learning.