Little Bluebells Playgroup & After School Club

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are content and happy at this welcoming and calm setting. They form secure relationships with the kind and nurturing staff team. New children receive close and sensitive support from their key person to help them to swiftly settle and flourish in confidence. Staff support children to have a positive attitude to learning through their sensitive interactions. The meaningful curriculum supports all children to make good progress. Staff have high expectations of children. They gently remind children to replace books back on the shelf when they have finished with them. Staff's consistent praise for children's achievements helps to increase their self-esteem.

Children are articulate communicators. Staff introduce them to new words, such as 'cauldron', and time to respond to questions posed to them. This motivates children to use complex sentences to talk about previous learning and experiences. Children express a deep love of books. Staff read children's chosen stories with great enthusiasm. This immediately captures their attention. Staff occasionally pause to enable children to fill in repeated refrains and express their thoughts and ideas. Children have a wonderful time creating leaf soup in the mud kitchen. Staff support them to learn about quantities and solve simple mathematical problems, such as addition. Children excitedly make predictions about the new colours they can create by mixing different paints together.

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

• Leaders have designed an ambitious and well-sequenced curriculum for children. This focuses on providing children with a broad and varied range of skills and knowledge. Staff skilfully adapt the curriculum to meet the individual cohort of children and value the uniqueness of every child. An overarching theme embraces children's current interests that supports the effective implementation of the interesting activities provided. Staff know children well. They gather some essential information from parents to understand children's preferences and needs. They also use their initial observations from bespoke settling-in sessions to assess what children already know and can do. However, they have not yet considered obtaining further information from parents to precisely inform early planning.
• Staff support children to be independent individuals and lead a healthy lifestyle. Children persevere to put on their coats prior to playing outdoors. They develop good physical skills and learn to assess their own risks as they balance and jump off tyres and carefully negotiate different terrains. Children also benefit from opportunities to run around in a large space and participate in team games in the host school's playing field. Staff use snack time to enhance children's awareness of healthy foods. Children learn that eating cheese and drinking milk will help them to have strong bones.
• Staff use group times and moments in children's play to remind them of the boundaries in place to help children gain an awareness of how to respect others. Children demonstrate friendly relationships with their peers. For example, they patiently wait for their turn to whisk paint, bubble bath and water together in a bowl, and kindly pass it to their friends when they have finished.
• Leaders are highly reflective on their own and their team's practice. They work closely with staff to support their ongoing professional development. Leaders frequently observe staff practice and provide support to continuously raise the quality of teaching. Staff have good opportunities to complete training. New knowledge and skills is shared with the whole team to ensure a consistent approach. Recent training has enhanced their awareness of how to promote good oral health in partnership with parents.
• Parents praise the good-quality care and education their children receive. Staff ensure they receive daily verbal feedback on their child's day and have access to written information and photos about their child's development through an online platform. There is a good two-way flow of communication. Additionally, parents and children's extended family members are warmly welcomed into the setting to participate in regular events throughout the year. Parents have a high regard for the staff and the service they provide. They describe the setting as a 'truly wonderful home-from-home' environment. Parents are very pleased with their children's progression and appreciate the 'kind' and 'nurturing' staff who consistently prioritise children's emotional well-being. However, staff are not as successful in developing working partnerships with other settings that children attend. This means that children who attend other settings lack consistency in their learning.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• extend the information gathered from parents when children first start to inform children's unique next steps in learning from the outset
• develop partnerships with other settings that children attend to promote continuity in children's learning and development.