Starlight's Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children thrive in this natural, inspiring and nurturing pre-school. Children arrive extremely happy, and staff welcome them with smiles and warm greetings. They eagerly leave their parents and carers and follow their curiosities. Staff provide an inspiring learning environment, indoors and outdoors. The child-led curriculum enables children to follow their interests, make choices to work things out and solve problems for themselves. This supports children to become confident and have a love for learning. Staff support all children to develop their natural curiosity and independence skills and to build resilience. The ethos of the curriculum is attachment, warmth and nurture. Managers know that secure and happy children learn better. Staff are committed to helping children to build foundations that promote and support their future learning journeys, including after leaving the pre-school.

Managers have gone above and beyond expectations in the design of the curriculum. Staff are truly dedicated to helping children to achieve the best start in life. They feel respected and heard. Staff appreciate the support and guidance they receive from managers. They then, in turn, reinvest this respect into children. Staff give children choices and ask for their opinions. Children demonstrate that they feel proud of their achievements, engaged by their learning and valued by staff and their peers. Staff have high expectations for children's behaviour. They reinforce rules with gentle reminders when needed. Staff provide consistent positive praise and encouragement, which fosters excellent behaviour among children. Staff actively support children in understanding and expressing their feelings, helping them to start to regulate their own emotions.

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

• Managers and staff are inspirational. They have a clear vision and high expectations of the staff team. Managers provide coaching and mentoring to staff and ensure that there is continuous improvement in their teaching. Staff undertake extensive professional development and reflect on how training supports the children in the pre-school. They continually evaluate the impact that the environment and staff's teaching has on children.
• The support provided for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities is a real strength of the pre-school. Staff carefully consider the use of additional funding and purchase resources that target any gaps in children's development. Strong partnerships with parents and other professionals help to ensure that children receive the support they need quickly and effectively. All children make exceptional progress from their starting points in learning.
• The environment is rich in language. This helps to support and develop children's communication and language to exceptionally high levels. Staff ask children open-ended questions and give them time to think and respond. They use stories, songs and rhymes to build children's vocabulary and introduce new words. Staff encourage children to recall events to promote conversations. For example, children talk about their recent adventures on aeroplanes and trains. Children who speak English as an additional language are very well supported. Staff value children's home languages, using words and pictures that may be familiar to them. This supports all children to become confident talkers.
• Outdoor learning is a strength of the pre-school. Children delight as they excitedly show visitors the two frogs that live in the garden. They build obstacle courses and use their physical skills to navigate the climbing wall. Staff teach children how to cultivate plants and vegetables in the garden.
• Staff provide children with a wealth of opportunities to explore and engage with different people, communities and the world around them. For example, they visit local shops to buy fruit for snack. Staff ensure that they expose children to different experiences and books to broaden their understanding of the diverse world that they live in.
• Staff help to prepare children for their futures. They consistently provide children with life skills that will support their learning and growth well after they leave the pre-school. Children show impressive levels of independence and key knowledge. They independently assess risks in the environment. For example, children wear high-visibility vests and use clipboards to make a risk assessment of the outdoor area. They give the thumbs up to their peers and tell them it is safe to play outside, and that there is nothing broken and nothing sharp.
• Children demonstrate excellent levels of independence. They access their shoes and hats before they go outside without being asked to do so by staff. Children wash their own crockery after snack time and brush their teeth after mealtimes. They demonstrate great perseverance and pride in their own accomplishments. Older children attend to their own self-care, which helps to prepare them for school.
• Parent partnership is exemplary. Staff maintain communication through ensuring that parents are informed daily about their child's activities, care needs and ways to support their development at home. A wealth of information is available in the pre-school, covering topics such as healthy eating, oral health and online safety. Parents highly commend the staff. They express confidence that their children are safe, well supported and making significant progress.