Stratton Playgroup

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and confident in this nurturing playgroup. Staff support children to feel welcome and secure. Children explore a wide variety of activities that enable them to make good progress in their learning and development. Staff are confident in the curriculum and use their observations of children and knowledge of their interests to adapt activities to each child. For example, children have shown an interest in insects. Subsequently, staff created an activity exploring toy insects with magnifying glasses where children built their knowledge of insect body parts and of how magnifying glasses work.

Indoors, staff guide children to develop confidence in mathematics, particularly counting and number. Children confidently count the number of children present. Later, children vote for which fruit to include in their group snack, and they count the total number of votes. They develop knowledge of concepts such as 'more than' and 'less of'.

Children are kind and behave well. They show an understanding of how their behaviour impacts on others. During an activity of moulding dough into crowns, older children happily share sculpting tools and kindly explain to each other how to do things, such as rolling and cutting. Younger children develop turn-taking skills as they enjoy a role-play game, pretending to take dolls on an aeroplane.

Children enjoy lots of opportunities to develop confidence in their physical skills. Staff help older children to play a team game to kick and throw a ball. Staff support children to develop their awareness of road safety as they 'drive' their ride-on vehicles on a road circuit in the playground. They negotiate a pedestrian crossing, stop signs and other obstacles.

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

• Managers have created a strong team of staff, and staff are confident in their roles and enjoy coming to work. Staff feel well supported and have lots of opportunities to continue their professional development. Staff regularly attend training courses relevant to the needs of the children in their care. For example, staff recently took a course about effective interactions. This guided them to build children's communication development even further. However, indoors, older children sometimes lack direction from staff and form small groups that become noisy. Staff do not always act quickly to engage these children. The resulting high energy level prevents children from developing deeper levels of concentration to build on their learning and development even more.
• Children have a great time outdoors. Younger children play cooperatively, cleaning a toy tractor with wet cloths, for example. They develop their balance and core strength while climbing over large tyres and balance posts. Staff support children to explore and be creative in the sandpit, building towers with building blocks. Most children spend the majority of the session outdoors. However, managers and staff do not extend these children's learning even further outdoors to cover the full curriculum, with particular regard to mathematics and literacy.
• Indoors, staff support children to develop literacy skills using a variety of activities, including developing the hand strength and ability to cut using scissors and exploring making marks. For example, they draw and colour in the King's crown and paint the flag of the United Kingdom. Children have access to a library corner that is well stocked with interesting books, and there is a lending library available for children to take books home to read with their parents. However, staff do not read to children often to extend their imaginations and explore events beyond their own experiences.
• Managers and staff are confident in what they want children to learn and why. Managers have ensured there is a strong focus on language and communication in the curriculum, and children make good progress in this aspect of their learning. Children confidently use sign language to communicate. To further support children's development, staff share the signing word of the week with parents. This week, the word is 'king' in celebration of the Coronation, and parents use this sign at home.
• Managers and staff have fostered strong relationships with parents. Parents feed back that they are happy with the good progress children make. They feel well supported by staff, and communication is strong. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) achieve good outcomes. Parents of children with SEND comment that their children are happy and confident to attend the playgroup and that they make good progress in their social and communication skills.
• Staff guide children to explore and understand their emotions. Children new to the setting are well supported to be comfortable and happy and develop confidence in their new surroundings. Children know their opinions matter. For example, democracy is evident in daily practice as children have opportunities to make group and individual choices throughout the day.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance the support for older children to help them to concentrate more, become more deeply involved and extend their learning further
• ensure that children who prefer to play outdoors experience the breadth of the curriculum, particularly mathematics and literacy
• increase opportunities for children to read books and listen to stories to help them develop their imaginations to explore people, places, times and events beyond their own experiences.