Sunflowers Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff provide an extremely welcoming, friendly, and nurturing environment for all children. They warmly greet children and their families on their arrival. This helps children build good relationships with all staff and helps them feel safe and secure. Children demonstrate this as they freely select resources to add to their play and ask staff for help when they need it. For example, children watch and listen as staff teach them to 'pinch, pinch, pull' to help them open packets at lunch time. Children quietly repeat this phrase and persevere to open packets for themselves.

Children are developing strong early literacy skills. Older children confidently write their name on their artwork and suggest words that start with specific sounds. Younger children build their vocabulary as they join in with familiar stories and rhymes. Children are becoming confident communicators.

Staff set up activities that are inviting and fun. Children spend time playing at the pretend seaside staff have created for them. They talk to their friends about what they are going to pack in their suitcase, sit in rubber rings, and take photos using old digital cameras. This encourages children's curiosity and creativity.

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

• Leaders and managers have carefully designed a curriculum which focusses on children's personal, social, and emotional development and promotes children's language and communication skills. Staff use information from parents when children arrive at the setting to understand children's previous learning and experiences. Staff use this information to skilfully build on what children can do and know and provide motivating and challenging experiences to give children a strong foundation in learning ready for school.
• Staff offer children a wide range of opportunities to help them learn about their local environment and the wider world. For instance, children regularly go for walks to the local supermarket and park. They enjoy a range of visitors coming to the setting to talk to them, including opportunities to see and touch different reptiles. This helps to develop children's understanding of the local community and provides opportunities that children may not have experienced before.
• Staff's engagement and interactions with children are extremely positive and supportive. Staff enthusiastically join children's play, respond to children's requests, and answer their questions. This helps children develop positive attitudes towards their learning. However, staff do not always recognise and respond quickly enough when children become disengaged in their play. This means at times children lose focus and attention on their learning.
• Parent partnerships are strong. Parents speak highly of staff. They value the regular updates staff share with them about children's progress and learning.
• Staff hold regular parent workshops where they suggest ideas and strategies parents could use to support their children at home. Parents are invited to special events such as, a 'Mother's Day Tea Party' and 'Doughnuts for Dads Day.' These positive relationships help children's continuity of learning.
• Staff effectively promote children's good health and physical exercise. For example, staff plan a wide range of experiences outdoors to develop children's physical skills. Children show they are developing good core strength as they balance on rocking wobble boards. They show they understand how to keep themselves safe in the sun as they talk about wearing sunhats and needing sunscreen before they go outside. Staff expertly teach children about eating a balanced and nutritious diet. Children knowledgeably talk about how they need lots of fruit and vegetables but should only eat small amounts of sweets.
• Children benefit from staff having a firm understanding of how children learn. Staff use this and their knowledge of each individual child to plan and deliver activities that provide all children with a wide range of skills and knowledge. Staff know what children can do and understand and what they need to learn next. For example, staff teach younger children how to accurately count dots and match them to the corresponding numbers. They encourage older children to use higher numbers and teach them how to write numbers ready for school. This helps children make good mathematical progress.
• Children behave well. Staff support children to learn and follow the daily routines and sensitively remind children of the boundaries they need to follow to keep themselves safe and to begin to make friendships. However, staff do not always teach children the language and skills they need to share and take turns and to solve minor disputes independently. Older children come to staff to solve disputes for them. This does not fully extend children's social development.
• Leaders and managers value the staff team and ensures their well-being is a priority. Staff have regular opportunities to continually develop and improve their professional practice and knowledge. Staff share any new learning they gain from training with the whole team to have a positive impact on children.
• Staff know their key children well. They build strong relationships with their key children from the start and tailor the care and learning they provide to meet each child's individual needs. These strong attachments effectively support children's emotional well-being. However, there is not a plan in place to support children when their key person is absent. When this happens, some children become a little unsettled and are unsure who to go for reassurance.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to recognise and respond swiftly when children become disengaged to help capture and maintain children's focus on learning
• provide further support for older children to learn how to share and solve minor disputes independently to fully extend their social development
• improve key-person arrangements to ensure that each child has an identified person to oversee their care and learning in the absence of their own key person.