Maple Montessori Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are ready to begin playing and learning the moment they arrive at the pre-school. They quickly separate from their parents and change into their nursery footwear. At the start of the day, children openly share how they are feeling with staff. This is because the manager prioritises building children's ability to understand and label their emotions. The adults use innovative ways to encourage children to share their feelings. For example, children learn how colours can reflect their mood from listening to 'The Colour Monster' story.

Children flourish and spend their day playing energetically and learning indoors and outside. Staff are highly skilled at deciding how to support children. Children are provided with challenging activities. For example, they learn to recognise the location of different continents on the globe.

The manager ensures children are actively encouraged to think, develop and test their ideas. Children confidently explain what they are doing and why with adults. They make independent choices in their play and seek each other out for games and role play.

Children behave extremely well. Adults are wonderful role models for them. They show children how to be kind and to respect others. Younger children confidently serve their own healthy snacks and sit to eat them. The pre-school is a happy, harmonious and inclusive setting.

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

• Staff intuitively give children time to investigate before interjecting to challenge children's thinking. They purposefully encourage children to remember information they have previously learned. For example, as children built a railroad, they said their vehicles will travel to Africa. Staff skilfully use opportunities like this to remind children that different modes of transport take longer to travel by than others. Children confidently answer adults' questions. They communicate with clearly structured sentences which incorporate the language of time.
• Children show a keen and sustained interest in the world and solar system. They confidently talk about how they live on the planet earth as they locate England on the globe. Children enjoy singing songs about the months of the year. They learn to link time to the earth orbiting. For example, they know it takes a year for the earth to travel around the sun.
• Staff aptly use key moments to teach and extend children's early maths. For example, they encourage children to use their fingers to show how many crackers they will eat at snack time. Staff name shapes like 'prism' as children collaborate, build and extend their constructions using wooden blocks. Children confidently trace numbers in sand and count their actions as they play.
• Outside, children play with great physical agility. They confidently climb tree branches and rope ladders, and play imaginary games together. They throw balls over arm and roll them through the legs of adults. Children have well-developed coordination for travelling across beams and riding balance bikes and scooters. They mix mud with twigs as they make salad in the mud kitchen. Later they offer adults imaginary healthy meals and confidently announce that 'salad makes you big and strong'.
• Staff work well with professionals and external agencies. They ensure they follow their advice closely. The pre-school's special educational needs coordinator is a very experienced and knowledgeable professional. She ensures that children's individual plans are regularly reviewed and shared with parents. She ensures individual children receive additional support in a timely manner. As a result, all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make the best possible progress.
• Parents are extremely complimentary regarding the pre-school. They say their children are happy and acquire advanced physical skills for their age. Parents feel that their children are well-prepared for starting school.
• The manager is an ambitious and principled leader. She is committed to providing children with a wealth of extra-curricular activities across the year. These include expressive movement during 'Street', Greek and Mexican dance sessions. Children learn to sing and speak in Spanish in group sessions. The manager is very supportive and has built a cohesive staff team. She ensures her team have plenty of opportunities to train, grow and develop in their roles. The manager knows that the strengths of her provision include building children's excellent communication, language and imagination skills.