Jigsaw Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and eager to enter this friendly pre-school. They settle easily to play with their friends. Children form very positive relationships with the welcoming, reassuring staff, helping them thrive and feel safe in their care. Staff are keen to help children achieve through their play. They provide a broad curriculum of motivating play experiences that build on children's interests and skills. This helps all children, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, to make good progress. Staff carefully consider how to spend any additional funding children receive to support their individual care and learning needs. Children behave very well. They benefit from the frequent praise staff give them and show pride in their achievements.

Children enjoy learning about numbers and are eager to count. For example, they have fun playing a dice game. Children throw the dice enthusiastically and count the spots on top of it. They quickly look for the written number that matches this. Older children talk confidently to staff about numbers of personal significance, such as the ages of their siblings, and they start to look at numbers higher than 10. Children concentrate well when using small fishing rods to pick up magnetic duck-shaped cards and match the numbers on these to the corresponding ducks.

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

• Leaders support staff's professional development effectively. For example, staff have raised their understanding of further ways to manage children's behaviour using positive reinforcement. Staff continue to develop their awareness of safeguarding issues. They form strong partnerships with other safeguarding agencies to keep good communication links to help protect children's welfare.
• Children use their imaginations very well in their play. They tell visitors about the pretend ice cream they make from play dough and say, 'We have made a mint-flavoured ice lolly.' They create a 'birthday strawberry cake', put small dinosaur-themed sticks into it and say, 'There are three candles on top.'
• Staff are skilled at initiating discussions with children and encourage their communication well overall. Children respond with interest to the questions staff ask them. They talk readily about emotions, using words such as 'sad', 'happy' or 'jealous', and learn describing words such as 'humungous'. However, although children enjoy their play, at times staff do not support the younger, less confident children's learning consistently well, for example during free-play activities to encourage their involvement and speech even further.
• Children play cooperatively and learn to be kind to others. Older children readily help their younger friends, for example to find a magnifying glass or a pot of bubbles for them to play with.
• Leaders and staff know what they want children to learn. They continually monitor children's progress and identify where they need to achieve next. Staff give a clear focus to helping children develop good personal, social and emotional skills as a foundation for learning. This supports children well and they develop a keen curiosity to learn through their play. For example, children become absorbed in using a pestle and mortar to mix herbs, water, leaves and petals to make their potions. They excitedly tell staff they have made a 'magic potion to help them fly'. Children enjoy visiting a local care home with staff, where they make friends with the residents and sing songs and read stories with them.
• Staff create inviting and welcoming play areas for children. However, they have not fully considered making more use of some resources to support children's spontaneous interests and ideas. For example, they have not considered further ways to use books and print to reinforce the interests of all children and particularly those who learn best outdoors.
• Parents state they are very happy with how their children are progressing, particularly with their speech and social skills. Parents comment that staff are very supportive and help their children to be confident and ready for starting school.
• Staff have reviewed and improved how they encourage children's awareness of healthy lifestyles. For example, children learn how to brush their teeth well and learn about foods that keep them healthy. They tell visitors that strawberries are juicy and they like eating watermelon for their snack. Children enjoy exercise and develop good coordination skills. For example, staff support children very well to gain confidence and find firm footholds to help them move safely across the climbing wall and rope ladder frame. Staff help children to think about safe ways to use the slide. Children have fun and excitedly whizz down the slide, landing on soft cushions.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the monitoring of staff practice to support all the learning needs of the quieter and less confident children consistently well
• make even better use of resources, such as in the role-play and outdoor areas, to challenge children's learning and support their spontaneous interests even further.