Riverside Early Years

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children show positive interactions with staff. They share their thoughts and ideas with staff who listen and respond appropriately. Furthermore, children ask staff to sit near them at lunchtime. Children show positive behaviour. Staff encourage them to work as a team to create structures in sand. Staff support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) to be prepared for changes in routine. For instance, staff talk to them about what will happen next alongside using visual prompts to support their understanding.

Older children concentrate as they are creative in their play. They make pretend tanks using wooden blocks, cardboard tubes and stickers. When their creations come apart and break, staff provide children with comfort and reassurance, supporting their emotional well-being. They encourage and help children to rebuild the tank, promoting a positive attitude to putting it back together. Children take and manage calculated risks. Staff encourage children to do this but monitor the risks they want children to take to avoid causing them harm. For example, staff place soft matting on the floor around larger apparatus when children climb and balance. Staff hold younger children's hands to promote their safety when they jump off equipment. Children sit and listen well when staff read them stories, learning skills for the future. They are invited to take part in the storytelling, for example, by copying actions in the book and talking about how the characters are feeling.

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

• Partnerships with parents are effective. Information about children's day and activities they enjoy is shared with parents. Staff support parents to continue children's learning at home. For instance, they send out tailored resource packs to meet children's individual family circumstances for parents to promote oral hygiene with their children at home. Parents borrow information to help them do scavenger hunts for insects with their children. This partnership working helps to promote consistency in supporting children's development.
• After children are happy and settled in the playgroup and staff's care, staff focus the curriculum on supporting children's communication and language skills. Overall, staff do this well, such as using sign language. This helps all children, including those who speak English as an additional language and those with SEND, to understand the words staff use and to communicate their needs. Furthermore, staff introduce new words to support older children to build on their vocabulary such as 'compact' and 'absorbing' when children pat sand and pour water onto sand.
• Children are offered a range of nutritious food to help promote a healthy diet. Staff invite children to help prepare some of the meals. This includes children helping to cut lettuce and cabbage to make coleslaw, supporting their understanding of how meals are made. Children learn about the positive impact food and drinks can have on their bodies. For instance, staff help them to learn that milk gives them strong bones.
• Staff attend supervision meetings with the management team to discuss what they do well and how to develop their knowledge further. Recent training staff attended helped to develop their knowledge of how to encourage children to develop their maths skills. For instance, staff ask children to predict how many bells are enclosed in a ball and help them to understand if children say a higher or lower number. Furthermore, staff provide experiences for children to measure their length as they lay on the floor.
• Staff praise children's achievements, such as when children with SEND climb onto apparatus on their own. Staff show children how to share and take turns. For instance, they roll balls to children and receive them back before letting their peers have a turn.
• Children are keen to join activities staff plan for them. However, sometimes during these planned activities, staff do not encourage the quieter and less confident children to join in discussions. This is to help them benefit more fully from the learning taking place.
• When children leave the playgroup to move on to school, staff share information with teachers about children's learning and development. However, when children already attend school, staff do not gather information from schools about children's experiences, so they can complement this when children attend before school, after school and during the school holidays.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to involve the quieter and less confident children in discussions during planned group times
• strengthen partnership working with schools children attend to find out and complement the experiences children receive at school.