Pebbles Pre School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children develop warm and trusting relationships with staff and with their friends. The happy and relaxed atmosphere in the pre-school contributes to the calm and safe environment children benefit from. Opportunities for children to learn about positive behaviour enable children to learn how to play cooperatively and how to value and respect the differing needs of their peers. For instance, children take turns outdoors, they confidently play on climbing equipment and share favourite toys together.

All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), benefit from a well-planned curriculum. Children are keen to learn and to enjoy the wide range of activities that staff provide. Staff know children well and create tailored learning opportunities which ignite children's curiosity. For instance, younger children enjoy learning about shapes as staff skilfully weave in opportunities to extend children's language skills. Children learn how to pronounce new words and what these new words mean, to continue to build on their developing communication skills. Children in receipt of additional funding benefit from the good one-to-one teaching that helps them to catch up in areas where they need additional support, particularly in developing their personal, social and emotional development.

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

• Staff support children's physical development well. Children are encouraged to try new activities and to take risks in play, to help them become confident in their growing abilities. For instance, older children practise taking wider steps as they confidently make their way along 'stepping stones' outdoors. Staff recognise the value of praising children, as children develop a can-do attitude to keep on trying when some activities present challenge to them, to successfully help them achieve new skills.
• Children are keen to learn and to enjoy a range of activities which captures their individual interests. Staff know what children can do and which areas teaching needs to be more focused on, to help children make good progress in their knowledge and skills. For instance, staff help children to count and to recognise some written numbers. They help children to practise this activity to develop their mathematical knowledge. Children gain good levels of engagement in activities. However, the manager and the staff identify some children do not concentrate as fully as possible in some activities, and opportunities to deepen children's learning are, therefore, not fully maximised.
• Staff place a strong focus on developing children's personal, social and emotional development. They help children to understand about their own feelings and emotions and those of others within the pre-school. For instance, children take part in a group activity, and staff use pictures to help children talk about how people feel, why they feel this way and discuss different ways that they can be helped to feel 'happy'. Staff skilfully reflect on this activity throughout the day, as children recall what they have learned and think about how they can play, take turns and share with their friends. Children's behaviour is good.
• Partnerships with parents and other professionals involved in children's care are good. Parents speak very highly of the manager and the staff at the pre-school. They value the regular information that staff share about children and feel that staff are approachable, attentive and enthusiastic in caring for their children. Parents comment on how during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, staff kept in touch with them and helped children to settle back happily into the setting. However, staff are yet to fully explore how to involve parents more meaningfully in their children's progress, to enable them to actively contribute and support their children's learning and development.
• The manager leads her staff team well. Staff say that they feel valued and well supported by the manager, who implements effective supervision, coaching and support to enable staff to provide good-quality teaching and learning opportunities for children. Staff are self-reflective and benefit from training to continue to develop their own teaching skills. For instance, staff are reviewing how they can broaden their knowledge of what children need to learn next, to support staff in capturing opportunities to teach children in their everyday play.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• maximise opportunities to support children's concentration and thinking even further
• strengthen partnership working with parents, to encourage them to actively contribute and support their children's learning and development more consistently.