Ladybirds Pre-school

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children respond positively to the friendly, caring staff. They feel safe in the pre-school and are keen to explore the exciting play activities offered. Staff are keen to help children learn through their play. They work together well as a team to plan activities that build on children's existing abilities and interests. Staff extend children's exploration, language and understanding of the world effectively. For example, children become absorbed playing with a small-world farm activity. They push the tractors and trailers around in the soil and talk about the marks and patterns. They move the farm animals in and out of the toy trailers and learn the noises these animals make. Children talk about the farmers sowing seeds and learn how these grow. Children enjoy exercise. They follow the actions from favourite songs and stretch their arms, march up and down and shake their hands and feet. Children gain confidence climbing up onto the slide and then happily push themselves down. They stretch, bend and lift in the role-play construction area. They know they need to wear their 'hard hats' to keep themselves safe when playing in this area. Children learn appropriate behaviour expectations and play together well.

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

• The manager and deputy manager have supported staff well to make improvements since the last inspection. They have worked together with the local authority to make positive changes. For example, staff have altered the outdoor play area to provide children with more space. They give clear focus to planning activities outdoors to motivate and challenge children's interests.
• Staff keep clear daily routines and provide a consistent approach to managing children's behaviour. They praise children often. Children feel valued and welcomed and show pride in their achievements.
• Children start to learn about early mathematical concepts, such as 'more' or 'less'. They become absorbed filling the weighing scales with dried pasta or fir cones and emptying these into containers. Children enjoy counting, such as the number of dinosaurs in a favourite story. They start to use their fingers to represent numbers. However, staff have not fully considered further ways to help children build on their counting skills, such as to start matching written numerals to quantity.
• Staff continue to develop their knowledge to help make continual improvements. They have completed training that has helped to raise their awareness of how to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• Staff are proactive in helping children explore their community. For example, they take children on the bus into town to go to the library or to a shop to get some food for their snacks.
• Children develop their imaginations well. For example, they stir, mix and pour earth and water in and out of containers at the mud-kitchen area. They proudly carry a 'mud-pudding cake' to the manager explaining it is for her birthday.
• Staff form good relationships with parents and help them settle their children in well. They share information about children's progress with parents. However, at times, staff do not share a wide range of observations that cover all areas of children's learning to support parent's involvement as consistently as possible.
• Children develop a clear enjoyment of stories and rhymes. They enjoy listening to a favourite story about a duck or a donkey. They develop the language to express their ideas and eagerly anticipate repeated rhyming phrases. They enthusiastically join in with a great big 'roar' of a dinosaur.
• Staff encourage children to follow good personal hygiene routines. Children know to wash their hands before eating. They independently wipe their noses, knowing to put the tissues in the bin afterwards.
• Children learn about nature well through the activities provided. For example, they show great curiosity when they find a grasshopper on a 'bug hunt' and watch it hop around. They show a visitor the 'bug hotel' and explain which insects they have found in there. With interest, children explore natural resources, such as pine cones, leaves and conkers.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• continue to develop the opportunities for children to recognise and match numbers to quantity in activities, to develop their mathematical awareness further
• strengthen procedures to keep parents more consistently well informed about their children's learning, to support their involvement further.