Jack & Jill's Childcare Trevorder

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children happily enter the setting and confidently wave goodbye to family members. They place their belongings away and self-register by finding their name card and placing it on the designated board. Staff and children have positive interactions. Children spontaneously hug staff, who respond affectionately. Children feel safe and secure.

Staff plan the curriculum around children's interests and needs. They talk to children often about their feelings, using props to support this. For instance, children use mirrors to look at their own emotions, and staff extend this by encouraging children to make faces using play dough. Staff provide excellent support for service families when loved ones are deployed away from home. Staff, who also have family members in the services, provide children with personalised booklets to share at home. This enables children and families to talk about their emotions, locate relatives on a world map and talk about when they will be coming home. This helps to support children's personal and emotional development well.

Children behave well and show kindness to one another. Outside, older children pour their younger peers a drink from the water dispenser. During tidy-up time, children work together by placing resources in the correct boxes.

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

• Staff support children's communication and language skills effectively. Following training, staff have implemented weekly words, differentiated depending on the ages of the children. They introduce new vocabulary into activities while children play, such as 'wide' and 'narrow'.
• Partnerships with parents is good. Staff have introduced small communication packs for younger children and children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) to take home. Staff include photos of activities children have enjoyed during the day, and parents can then share these with their children. However, staff do not tailor all home-learning activities to meet children's individual needs to further extend their development.
• Children enjoy music and movement sessions with staff. They pretend to make pizza with two wooden rhythm sticks. Staff encourage children to 'roll out the dough, stir the sauce, grate the cheese and chop the meat' for their 'pizza'. Children strengthen their arm muscles while carrying out the actions and enjoy singing along to the song. They have a positive attitude to learning.
• Staff provide a range of healthy snacks for children to enjoy. They talk to children about where milk comes from and how it benefits their bones and teeth. Occasionally, staff do not adapt their teaching to build on children's existing skills. For example, during the inspection, staff did not support some younger children to pour their own drinks or enable older and most-able children to prepare their food more independently.
• Children enjoy using real fruit and vegetables in the role-play area. They relish squeezing oranges and talk about how these feel 'squishy' and taste 'sweet'. Children explore onions, brussels sprouts and potatoes, while staff encourage them to use words to describe them.
• Staff help to develop children's understanding of oral health. They provide teeth moulds and encourage children to draw on 'bacteria' using black pens. Children then use toothbrushes to clean the 'plaque' away.
• Children benefit from a range of both fact and fiction books, which they can access inside and in the garden area. Children also enjoy taking books home from the setting's lending library. Staff invite librarians to share their favourite tales with the children to support their early reading skills.
• Staff help children to develop their physical movements in fun ways. Children enjoy throwing items at targets outside. For instance, children dress up as Spiderman and throw cooked spaghetti at the wall, pretending they are spinning a web.
• Staff display high levels of well-being and comment on how leaders support them effectively. They show strong levels of commitment to childcare, with shared values in consistently adapting the setting to benefit children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop further strategies to help extend children's learning when at home
• adapt teaching, particularly during small-group times, to help all children build on their existing skills.