Ladybirds Playschool LTD

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children settle quickly and engage in activities that spark their interest and curiosity. Staff provide a good balance of adult-led activities that encourage children to join in with others to sing songs, share their thoughts and engage in conversation. Children move confidently around the indoor and outdoor play areas, engaging in activities that extend their learning. They learn to take safe risks in their play, for example when jumping off wooden structures outdoors. Staff are nearby to supervise and assess potential risks.

Managers and staff have developed a targeted curriculum that focuses on children's personal, social and emotional development, particularly their emotional well-being. Staff are clear about wanting children to become independent and confident in themselves and their relationships with others. Staff provide clear support, encouragement and activities that allow children to explore their feelings and help them to regulate their emotions.

Staff provide children with good opportunities to talk and share their thoughts and ideas during activities. They pose questions and provide time for children to solve problems, for example when looking at whether items will sink or float when playing with the water.

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

• Staff know the children well and provide caring support and engagement. They get down to the children's level and communicate well. They ask questions, giving children time to think and introducing new language. Children use their language confidently to express themselves, ask questions and share their thoughts. This successfully extends conversations about children's home life experiences, and children learn to listen. At times, some of the quieter children miss out on staff's support to help them learn and engage more in their learning.
• There are effective processes for self-evaluation to bring about changes that have a positive impact on children. Staff reflect daily on the success of activities and children's learning, to help them make changes as needed. Managers monitor the bigger picture to improve children's experiences overall. This has led them to extend children's interest in nature and healthy eating successfully by providing consistent opportunities for children to plant, grow and eat produce from their vegetable patch.
• The management team provides good opportunities and support for staff to attend training to improve the quality of their teaching. This has had a particular effect on how well staff understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's emotional well-being. Staff support children to learn to recognise their emotions effectively. Children talk through how they feel, explore why, and find ways to manage their emotions. Other activities, such as emotion cards, enable children to recognise a range of emotions in others.
• Staff provide children with good opportunities to be creative and construct their own designs, such as crowns. Children competently use scissors independently and safely to add interest to their creations. They talk about the Queen and how they will wear their crown when they visit her. Activities such as these help build the strength in children's hands in preparation for their early writing.
• Children have good opportunities to explore and experiment outdoors, particularly with water. They receive good staff support to measure, test their ideas and learn new language, such as 'floating', 'sinking', 'big', 'little' and 'heavy'. Children use the large wooden boxes to climb on. They mix potions with the water and plants they find. However, there are fewer opportunities for children to be more physically active in their play and learning.
• Children benefit greatly from effective small-group activities that target their learning needs well, for example to solve problems. For example, children explore a set of photo cards and learn to sequence them independently to show the process of putting shoes on or knocking over a row of dominoes. Staff give children the time and space to think this through themselves, and then engage them in good conversation to talk the process through.
• Staff manage children's behaviour well. From a young age, children learn to share, take turns and consider others. They are polite and kind. Staff are positive role models and interact kindly and sensitively with children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• allow more opportunities for children to be more physically active
• provide more targeted support for the quieter children, to help them learn and engage more in their learning.