Rain Or Shine Forest Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

All children are incredibly confident, independent and happy in the stimulating and motivating outdoor learning environment. Extremely dedicated staff have an outstanding knowledge of how they implement their curriculum effectively to enthral children in their learning opportunities. Children are incredibly enthusiastic to engage in the highly challenging activities staff carefully plan for them. For example, staff teach children how to use real tools, such as drills, safely to create their own resources. They build their own tree swing and make instruments, using sticks, string and bottle tops. Children are incredibly imaginative. They build a enormous pirate ship out of wood, rope ladders and cargo nets. Staff build on the interest of pirates and teach children how to skilfully tie different types of knots with rope.

All staff are outstanding role models. Children's behaviour is impeccable, and they are incredibly polite. They have excellent levels of empathy and kindness. For example, they respect wildlife and living things. Children lovingly hug other children and remind each other how to keep their hands warm, saying, 'rub them together'. Children gain an excellent understanding of the importance of healthy lifestyles. For instance, they discuss the importance of having regular drinks to remain hydrated. Children have outstanding opportunities to challenge their physical skills. They negotiate increasingly complex equipment safely, such as using tree swings, climbing trees and doing forward rolls over horizontal poles with excellent confidence.

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

• The highly qualified staff team is incredibly dedicated and passionate in successfully fulfilling its role of teaching children new skills. Children have an extremely positive attitude towards their learning. They are resilient and persist at a task until they achieve what they set out to do. Staff have extremely high expectations of children, and all children make outstanding progress. This includes children who speak English as an additional language and children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• All staff establish incredibly positive relationships with children. They get to know their individual personalities and what makes them unique incredibly well. Children are enthusiastic at the setting and remain inspired to explore and investigate in the knowledge they are in a safe, secure and trusting environment.
• The manager and staff establish an extremely positive partnership with parents and keep them incredibly well informed of their children's learning. For example, parents are invited to learn about campfire activities their children participate in, such as cooking vegetable soup and making play dough. Staff routinely share training with parents and children, such as how to keep them safe online and the impact of screen time on children's development.
• All children are extremely confident to communicate their ideas. They have an extensive range of vocabulary and learn new words daily. For instance, children talk about 'tranquillity' during meditation activities and think about the 'terrain' when risk assessing their environment.
• Staff support children to gain an outstanding level of respect and understanding of other people from around the world. For example, they learn about Jewish traditions and make traditional hamantaschen biscuits. Children celebrate festivals of other countries, such as the Iranian festival Yalda, where they celebrate the change in seasons. Children share with each other something they are grateful for. Children learn the pre-school's goodbye song in a wide range of languages, including Farsi, Vietnamese and Portuguese.
• All staff evaluate their practice together exceptionally well. They regularly observe each other teaching and interacting with children. They use feedback to set highly challenging targets to further enhance their performance. Staff include children and ask them daily what they have learned from the activities and what they would like to add to the activity plans. Children feel extremely valued and listened to.
• The manager is fully committed to supporting staff to continually enhance with skills and knowledge. For instance, they have learned about the different ways to support all children to express themselves and manage their mental health and well-being. The manager highlights that she would like to continue to upskill the already extremely knowledgeable staff even further.