Kids Planet Hixon

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff focus on helping children to settle. For instance, they greet them warmly and invite them to take part in age-appropriate tasks, such as filling up their own water bottle. This encourages children to easily leave their parents and carers. Children like to be independent. They self-serve their own meals and wash their own hands. When needed, staff provide children with extra guidance and support to strengthen their self-help skills. For example, during handwashing, they encourage younger children to notice any remaining soap bubbles on their hands.

Children of all ages have the freedom to safely explore their environment, choosing where they would like to play and what with. For instance, they purposefully transport water around the garden in a wheelbarrow, use paint brushes and rollers to make marks on large sheets of material, and enjoy washing vegetables and planting seeds. They demonstrate high levels of happiness. Children know the daily routines well. For instance, they confidently take off their outdoor shoes before going indoors and wait patiently to be chosen to be the lunchtime helper. They demonstrate beautiful social skills as they help one another and check on how others are feeling. For example, they practise saying 'thank you' as they hand their peers their plates at mealtimes. Children show a general interest in others, such as asking 'what school are you going to?'. Staff positively praise children for their good behaviour. This motivates them and builds on their self-confidence.

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

• The curriculum is designed to provide children with new experiences and life skills. For example, children have opportunities to become 'expert photographers'. Their once blurry photos now demonstrate quality and precision. Staff pride themselves in the extracurricular activities that they provide, such as science sessions, sports, and 'wonder walks' in the local community where children learn about nature.
• Staff provide children with a variety of stories, information books and brochures to enhance their literacy skills. They plan story-based activities and enthusiastically implement ideas that they have acquired from training. For example, they paint their face and change their clothes to re-enact the story of 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea'. This develops children's love of stories as they show expression and empathy for the characters.
• Staff help children to learn new words. For instance, they name the items that children are playing with and encourage them to practise saying those words back. When children say 'fire', staff introduce 'volcano' to widen their vocabulary. However, at times, some staff do not always give children the opportunity to verbalise their own ideas and practise their thinking skills. This limits children's opportunities to engage in conversations.
• Partnerships with parents are well developed. Parents attend stay-and-play sessions and take part in community outings with their children, such as trips to the local allotment where they help to harvest the fruit and vegetables. The manager welcomes parents' suggestions and takes on board any feedback to enhance what the setting offers. Parents say, 'staff are brilliant', and they are delighted with the support and care that their children receive.
• Support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) is phenomenal. The deputy manager, who is also the special educational needs coordinator, works impeccably close with parents, other professionals and staff to oversee the needs of those children with SEND. She comes up with innovative ways to strengthen children's learning, such as teaching them to 'shoot webs like Spiderman' to strengthen their wrist muscles.
• Staff work extremely hard to engage with all schools that children will eventually move on to. They travel long distances to meet face-to-face with teachers to discuss individual children's learning and progress. Staff actively find out about the school's curriculum to give children a head start in their education. For example, they introduce the same stories that children will later explore at school. When children attend two settings, staff liaise with other key persons to share assessments. This ensures that children's emotions and preferences are well accounted for.
• Children visit the next room during key times of the day to practise their developing skills alongside others who are working at a different ability level in that skill. For instance, babies learn to self-pour their own drinks and drink from an open cup, alongside toddlers. This promotes a 'can-do' attitude and a smooth transition through the rooms.
• The manager has a clear and ambitious vision for the setting's future. Through training and staff progression, she strives to provide children with even more opportunities to build fundamental life skills through sequential learning. This means, prior to children going to school, they will know how to use a range of tools and equipment with purpose and precision.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• help staff to strengthen their practice to further extend children's communication and thinking skills to the very highest level.