Scamps Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy attending this friendly and welcoming setting. They have good relationships with the supportive staff, which helps them to feel secure, settled and ready to explore. Children enjoy getting involved in a varied range of learning opportunities and concentrate well on what they are doing. For example, they spend time exploring coloured ice cubes and observe them melting. Children show fascination as they listen to the story of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and then look at live butterflies which have hatched. Children build close friendships and show great respect for one another. They patiently wait for other children to wash their sticky hands during a smoothie-making activity.

Staff know children well and have high expectations for what they can achieve. They quickly establish children's interests and what they can already do when they start at the setting. Staff make effective use of this information to plan what each child needs to do next and provide interesting activities to support their individual learning. This helps children, including those who need additional help, to make good progress.

The setting closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The manager continued to work, ensuring that she kept in touch with families and children, and sent them ideas for activities they could do at home. When the setting reopened, she ensured that those children who would be moving up to school were given priority to attend while continuing to support those children still at home. The impact of COVID-19 on some areas of children's development has become evident, and leaders and staff are working to support those children who need extra support as a result.

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

• Staff interact well with children, building friendly and supportive relationships with them. Staff know what each child needs to learn and use effective teaching methods to engage and motivate them. For example, they talk to children about how important it is to keep practising when they are learning a new skill. Staff are skilled at extending children's learning. When children decide to play in the mud kitchen, staff introduce language such as 'more than', 'less than' and 'enough', and ask children if they think the bowl is big enough for the soil.
• Children are exceptionally well behaved. They helped to write the golden rules so they fully understand the expectations for their behaviour. Staff reinforce the importance of sharing and taking turns, and children respond extremely well. Children learn about managing their feelings and show great respect for each other. For example, they comfort others who are worried by the noise of the blender.
• Children are confident speakers who happily chat to each other, staff and visitors. Even children whose speech is not as well developed still feel confident to express themselves. Staff have identified that some children's speech development has been affected by the disruption cased by the pandemic. In addition to referring them for speech and language therapy, they have also been working hard to develop children's speech using various strategies, such as games and exercises for their lips, tongue and mouth.
• Children learn about healthy lifestyles. They learn good hygiene habits, carefully following the displayed process for handwashing and using the nose-blowing station. Children learn about what foods are good for them. For example, they grow their own strawberries which they pick and use to make healthy smoothies.
• Leaders make good use of frequent supervision meetings and team meetings to develop staff's practice and check on their well-being. Staff have good opportunities for professional development and share what they learn at training to improve the provision. There is a strong culture of reflection and improvement.
• Leaders and staff work closely with parents and carers to ensure that the needs of the children are understood and met. They share information with them in a variety of different ways and involve them in their children's learning. Parents and carers report that leaders and staff provide support for them as well as their children and they value this greatly.
• Staff do not always provide sufficient challenge for the most-able children. Leaders have begun to make some changes, such as acquiring more challenging resources. However, some identified next steps for more able children focus on continuing previous learning rather than identifying and working on their future learning needs.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance the planning and support for the most-able children to ensure that they are suitably challenged.