Laugh And Learn Tarring

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Management and staff create a highly nurturing pre-school, where children feel completely happy, safe and secure. Children form wonderful bonds with the caring staff and excitedly include them in their experiences. They eagerly give staff roles in their imaginary play saying, 'you wear the builder's hat and use the cement mixer', as they 'build'. Children are confident, motivated and have strong self-esteem. They proudly show staff their finished artwork and creations and know their achievements are valued highly.

Overall, children explore the exciting pre-school with great confidence. They enjoy taking part in the wide range of well-planned activities on offer and are eager to take on challenges set by staff. For example, children confidently match quantities of toys to written numbers and count beyond 20. They persevere through difficulties, such as when peeling sticky tape off the roll, and are very willing to try things for themselves.

Children are very sociable and thoroughly enjoy playing together, making strong early friendships. They behave well and show great consideration for others. For example, as children explored junk modelling, they kindly collected scissors and passed them around so everyone had a pair. Children are polite, helpful and thoughtful members of the pre-school.

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

• Leaders and staff are dedicated to ensuring all children achieve their potential. They know each child very well and provide a highly inclusive environment. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those who receive additional funding progress well from their starting points. Leaders are quick to access any additional support needed from local inclusion services and develop strong links with relevant professionals. They share expertise with speech and language therapists to help provide well-tailored support for children with speech delay. Parents are overwhelmingly appreciative of the high levels of support both they and their children receive.
• Leaders and staff work together closely and continuously discuss children's individual needs, development and circumstances. They provide a broad and challenging curriculum, which successfully builds on what children already know and can do. During the inspection, children explored the concept of over and under through many different activities. For example, they pushed trains under and over bridges, read books about how sea creatures live under the sea and stepped over stepping stones. Staff fully understand how children learn and use repetition skilfully to deepen children's knowledge.
• Leaders focus on building children's self-esteem and emotional well-being. This is at the heart of the pre-school and, as a result, children are motivated and enthusiastic learners. They begin to understand and manage their emotions and consider those of others. For instance, children recognised that different facial expressions can represent feelings, such as sad, happy and scared. They thoughtfully discussed why people might feel different emotions and giggled as they made faces in the mirror, looking shocked or tired.
• Staff are skilled teachers and make strong use of their interactions with children to guide and extend their learning. For instance, they encouraged children to make a train out of old boxes and materials. Children eagerly shared their ideas, such as using cupcake cases as the lights for when the train goes into the tunnel. Overall, children engage busily in their play. However, on rare occasions during the inspection, staff needed to give more support to quieter and less confident children to help them fully engage in meaningful play and learning.
• Leaders support their well-qualified and experienced staff team successfully. They focus well on continued professional development and make regular improvements to children's experiences. For example, they have focused on outdoor mark making and children now have more exciting opportunities to develop their skills outside.
• Staff understand the importance of filling any gaps in children's experiences. For instance, they ensure children spend plenty of time learning outdoors, as a number of families that attend do not have easy access to this. However, staff do not fully support children's understanding of the use of technology. For instance, they do not consistently help them learn about online safety and where to seek support if needed.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to consistently give quieter and less confident children the additional support they need to help them fully engage in their play and learning at all times
• focus more on children's understanding of the use of technology, to help them learn about online safety and where to seek support if needed.