St Oswalds Ladybirds Preschool (CIO)

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enter the pre-school with enthusiasm and an eagerness to learn. They demonstrate they have a strong sense of security and feel safe. They confidently settle and quickly choose what they wish to play with. Children understand the expectations for behaviour. They are well mannered and form good friendships with their peers. They play cooperatively together. This is evident as they make roller coasters. They share the building blocks and take turns in placing the blocks side by side. They talk to each other about what size block to use and enjoy rolling cars down their finished creation.

Staff have high expectations for children's learning and provide activities that enthuse and enhance their play. Children relish these activities and have a positive attitude towards their learning. For example, staff provide snails for children to look at, to help extend their understanding of minibeasts. Children become engrossed in watching the snails come out of their shells. They start a snail race and look at the snail's shell. Staff extend this activity well and suggest children make some snail trails using glue. Children thoroughly enjoy this. They use their small-muscle skills effectively as they spread the glue on black paper. Children delight in talking to the staff about snails and that they 'are drawing snail poo'.

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

• The manager and staff work well as a team. They take the time to get to know the children when they start at the pre-school. This helps them to plan activities that are of interest to the children. Staff monitor children's progress and identify their next steps in learning. They provide activities that ignite children's learning, such as exploring the properties of soap and shaving cream. Children eagerly move their hands and make large swirling movements. This helps to strengthen their small muscular skills.
• Staff use of additional funding effectively, such as purchasing balancing boards, to enhance children's physical development. They provide timely interventions and take advice from external professionals, to help meet the needs of children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• The manager provides a curriculum that follows children's interests and encourages them to explore and investigate. Children are motivated to learn and show good levels of engagement during their self-selected play. However, when they take part in group activities some children become restless. This is evident as children sit and listen to staff explain facts about snails but wait too long to go on the snail hunt.
• Staff promote children's communication and language skills effectively. They make eye-contact when speaking to children and ask questions that encourage them to think. They introduce new words into children's vocabulary, such as
• 'tentacles' and 'spiral pattern', when talking about snails. This helps extend their conversational skills.
• Staff are less confident in their understanding of the overarching intention to help children develop their early reading skills. They place books alongside activities and have print in the environment. However, staff do not encourage children to use these to help extend their understanding of words and sentences, and excite their love of stories.
• Parents praise the staff and feel that they have been given detailed information on their child's progress. Staff find out about the children's experiences from home, such as children's enjoyment of outside play. This has led to the pre-school developing their wild garden. Here, children can explore nature and learn to take risks. For example, they climb slippery slopes, lift logs to find insects and build using twigs. This helps to build their confidence and self-esteem and, therefore, helps their future learning.
• Children behave well and develop their personal skills effectively. They frequently wash their hands and tell each other they are 'getting rid of the germs'. Children are developing their independence skills effectively to help with their future learning. For example, they clear away their dishes after snack and independently put on their all-in-one suits to go outside.
• The manager is ambitious and has a positive working relationship with the host school. She plans purposeful and enjoyable professional development opportunities for her team. For example, staff complete training about using yoga to help provide a calming effect for the children. This is having a positive impact on learning through the staff's deepened awareness of how to help children deal with emotions and feelings.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop staff's understanding of the overarching intention for early reading skills and provide them with ideas of how to implement the intention during play, in order to enhance children's early literacy skills
• review the organisation of group activities to ensure all children remain engaged and ready to extend learning opportunities further.