Little Acorns Royston Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy their time at this welcoming and interesting pre-school. They settle in quickly and follow the routine to put their belongings away. This helps them gain confidence and be ready to learn. When younger children struggle to manage their behaviour, staff calmly and effectively support them to understand their feelings. This helps young children to learn how to behave. Children enjoy music. They sing welcome songs and nursery rhymes. Staff energetically dance and children join in, moving their bodies in creative ways. Older children dress up and become characters from their favourite films. This helps children to develop their imaginations.

Children are developing a love of books and stories. They re-enact the plot from familiar stories, explaining which part comes first. Staff join in play, pretending to be the wolf chasing the little pigs. Staff then follow children's interest and retell the story. They include the children's names and children instinctively call out the familiar phrases at the right time in the story. This helps children to develop their listening skills. Children explore the outdoors with energy and curiosity. They balance on tyres and planks, which helps them to build their core strength. Children lift long planks and arrange them to create dens. This helps them to gain an awareness of the space around them as they move safely, avoiding others.

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

• The entire staff team is motivated and committed to their work. Leaders support them very well. They work together closely and actively seek out ways to develop staff skills. For example, when staff express an interest in becoming trained in teaching sign language, the leaders clearly encourage this. As a result, staff feel happy to work here and improvements to benefit children and families are continuous.
• Staff have a good understanding of child development and how activities help children learn. They thoughtfully select the resources that children can choose from, knowing they will experience essential learning as they play. For example, the rope swing is to help children gain awareness of how to consider risks. However, when planning adult-led experiences, they do not focus precisely enough on learning intentions that help children make very good progress.
• The staff team help children to progress in their language skills. They sign words, so that children of all abilities can communicate their needs clearly. Children look at picture cards to understand what is going to happen and can be ready for the next part of the day's routine. Staff gain children's attention first then speak to them while looking at them. This helps children to pick up social cues needed for conversations.
• Staff note children's curiosities and support them to find out more and have a go. For example, when looking for insects, staff encourage children to use a magnifying glass to search for the creatures in the 'bug hotel'. This helps children stay interested in their self-chosen activities. However, they do not fully extend the most-able children's learning, so they are fully challenged during their pre-school sessions.
• Parents are very happy with the care at the pre-school. They value the relationship with their child's key person and say they receive a lot of information about their child's day through the online learning journal. Parents tell the inspector their children have 'come on in leaps and bounds'. They have noticed their speech and hand control has developed quickly since attending pre-school.
• The provider has a wealth of knowledge and experience to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. She guides the staff, parents and children through the processes needed to ensure that there is appropriate support in place. There is a clear vision that all children should reach their potential. The leadership team monitor children's learning successfully to help ensure they make good progress from their starting points.
• Children have a range of opportunities to explore mathematical concepts. Young children fill and pour sand as staff label the quantities 'full' and 'empty'. Staff help children to count accurately, such as when building a tower of bricks.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• help staff refine the planning of adult-led experiences to focus more precisely on the learning intentions that will benefit children
• help staff strengthen teaching, so that they further extend the learning of the most-able children.