Jimmy D's

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are confident to arrive and separate from parents. They are keen to play with the toys and activities staff offer them. Children are supported to understand the rules and boundaries that staff implement. For instance, when children begin to run indoors, staff remind them to use their 'walking feet'. Children invite staff to join their play, showing the positive relationships they have with them. For example, staff join children's role-play experiences. Older and younger children learn how to share when staff ask them to share and eat a pretend birthday cake with their peers. Children listen, follow staff's instructions and build on their imaginative skills.

Children are supported to develop their mathematics skills. For example, staff introduce language to describe size when they talk to older children about images being 'big', 'medium' and 'small'. When staff sing songs with children about numbers, children recognise written numbers and copy staff to show the same number of fingers. Furthermore, children are supported to understand different shapes and try to make the same shape with their hands, such as a circle and a triangle. Staff take children into the hall of the host school to engage in physical activities. This helps them to become familiar with the environment before they move on to school.

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

• Staff provide children with opportunities to revisit and practise skills to embed their learning. For example, staff offer children planned activities to learn how to brush their teeth to promote oral hygiene. Children use toothbrushes to brush pretend marks off images of dirty teeth. When children make choices in their play, they revisit using toothbrushes and use these with foam to clean dolls' teeth.
• Staff attend training courses to help build on their professional development. Recent training has developed their knowledge of how to help children regulate their emotions and feelings. Additional funding that some children receive is used to purchase books to help children understand how they feel. When children share these books with staff they say that dinosaurs make them feel happy.
• Staff's curriculum includes observing, assessing children's development and identifying what they need to learn next. Alongside this, staff introduce themes to help build on children's knowledge, including supporting children to learn about people who help them. For example, staff provide images of pretend fires and water sprays. Children use the muscles in their hands to spray the fire with water, helping them to understand the role of firefighters.
• Staff gather information from other early years settings that the children previously attended to find out about children's prior abilities. They use this information to help plan for children's progress. However, staff are not fully effective in gathering and sharing information with all parents about their children's learning and development.
• Children are given tasks to complete to help give them a sense of responsibility. For example, children ring a bell to alert their friends when it is snack time. They use towels to wipe down wet equipment in the garden. When staff play certain music, children show their understanding of what this means and begin to tidy away the toys. This contributes to children showing positive behaviour.
• When children attend the playgroup, they have a key person who is a member of staff who knows their care and learning needs well. However, when younger children attend the before- and after-school club, they are not provided with a key person to help meet their individual care needs more precisely.
• If staff identify any gaps in children's learning, they liaise with other professionals to plan for children's individual needs. Staff implement targets to help close any gaps in children's learning. This includes providing activities to support children's speaking skills, for example to introduce two-word phrases for children to copy.
• Staff support children to use communication in their play. For instance, children use toy phones and hold long conversations with staff about what they are doing.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop ways to communicate with all parents about their children's learning and development
• strengthen the key-person system so that it is consistently effective in promoting all children's individual care needs.