Red Room Pre-School Annex

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children happily arrive at this pre-school. They build good bonds with staff and new children settle easily. Staff are caring and respond to children's needs and interests with enthusiasm, supporting their well-being very effectively. Parents say that the pre-school is a very nurturing environment for the children. Children develop their social skills and start to build friendships. Older boys imaginatively play together, discussing their ideas and cooperating well as they scoop up and transfer sand with a digger and then dump this in the toy truck. Younger girls start to independently share items and interact with each other as they play with dough.

Staff form their curriculum carefully, focusing this on children's learning needs and interests. Staff promote children's literacy development very effectively. Children learn to recognise and find their labelled name tag when they arrive and their 'pen box'. Children choose a book to take home to share with parents and story time inspires children's interest in books. Staff skilfully use associated activities to build children's skills in other aspects. For example, older children discuss their families proudly, including baby siblings. They make marks and draw suitable shapes to form pictures of them, prompted by staff's reading them a story about families. Children explore making marks in other interesting ways. Staff thoughtfully set out resources to inspire them as they play. Children create treasure maps in the pirate ship outside and use these in their imaginative play. Children are developing into confident, independent learners and gaining useful skills in readiness for the next stage of their education.

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

• Partnership working supports consistency for children. Staff share their regular assessments of children with parents and gain information on what children are learning at home to inform their planning. They work with schools that children move on to and other settings they already attend, to help all key people working with children clearly know their needs.
• Staff have 'rules' in place to support children to explore safely and to be comfortable and happy as they play. Older children remind their friends not to throw sand and keep the trikes on the playground. Staff offer children reminders and timely support, for example, as children climb up the slide or try to slide down the climbing wall. They very effectively help them consider the risk and think of what else they could do, such as finding a towel to dry the slide.
• Staff speak clearly to children and encourage their conversation. They model language, explain new concepts and appropriately and sensitively clarify misconceptions, developing children's understanding very well. For example, older children say they need a plumber to fix their toy car. Staff explain what a plumber does and that they need a mechanic, discussing what they do and repeating this word to ensure children understand.
• The staff team have well-embedded routines and arrangements to support children to do things for themselves and develop their independence skills. Children learn to pour their own drinks, peel their fruit, scrape their waste into the compost bin and put their plates and cups in the bowl. They join staff in doing 'jobs', tidying away toys, making sure they go in the right place. Children gain useful life skills, confidence in their abilities and develop their sense of responsibility very beneficially. Parents are very grateful for these opportunities and say these skills help children in their move on to school.
• At times, staff skilfully pick up on children's preferred exploration. For example, one child moves the small slide to a new position and another plays with apples that have fallen from the tree. Staff then inspire children to explore rolling the apples down the slide to see how far they can go. However, at other times staff do not adapt their teaching in activities, particularly to help younger children easily follow their interests and continue to be engaged in activities.
• Staff build children's maths skills well. Children learn numbers in a practical context. Staff help them find the number size in their shoe, then boots with the same number. Staff model maths language for children, discussing size and quantity. Children have fun in group activities, counting their friends who act out being 'speckled frogs' in a song.
• There have been several changes to the staff team more recently. Staff undertake training to renew their key knowledge and complete qualifications to increase their skills. The new team have useful plans and interesting ideas to develop the practice at the pre-school. Management clearly supports all staff's safeguarding knowledge and shares children's key care arrangements carefully with new staff. However, they do not clearly outline and implement comprehensive support for the new staff's implementation of the curriculum, to provide consistently high-quality teaching and experiences for children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• consistently adapt teaching and support, to ensure children's continued engagement and learning and develop their skills as high as possible
• more clearly outline and implement support for new staff and those new to their role, following the curriculum more carefully and providing consistently high-quality experiences for children.