The Ark At Tresillian

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happy and receive a warm welcome from staff as they enter the setting. Children of all ages and abilities make independent choices in their learning from the wide range of high-quality resources and equipment on offer. The outdoor learning environment is extremely well planned and organised. Children are well behaved as they confidently explore their environments. For example, children excitedly join in a game of bat and ball with their friends. They giggle with delight as they attempt to use their bat to hit the ball, developing their hand-to-eye coordination. Children demonstrate increasing control over the bat as they develop their physical skills.

Children demonstrate a positive attitude to learning and staff have high expectations for every child. For example, older children show impressive levels of concentration as they use pens to develop their early writing skills. Children successfully form letters to write their names. They excitedly approach staff to share their accomplishments. Children beam with pride as staff praise them for their achievements. This builds children's confidence and self-esteem.

Children show they have formed positive relationships with staff. Babies approach staff for cuddles. They smile and show they feel safe and secure through the nurturing comfort they receive from the staff. This helps to support children's emotional development.

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

• Managers are very passionate about their roles in supporting staff within the setting. They clearly understand how to support staff to deliver high-quality early years care and education. They support staff to recognise and identify emerging gaps in children's development, and any gaps are narrowed promptly.
• Staff express that they feel well supported by the managers. Staff have access to regular training, enabling them to further develop their skills. Recently, staff participated in storytelling training. They use props to captivate children's interest at story time. This helps to support children to develop their listening and attention skills.
• Managers continuously evaluate their setting, recognising how to make positive changes that promote children's learning and development effectively. They strive to make the setting the very best it can be for the children who attend, as well as their families. For example, they have recently developed a forest school area within the outdoor environment and introduced forest school sessions for children. Managers say children learn to problem-solve and take appropriate risks. These sessions have had a positive impact on promoting self-confidence and independence in children of all ages and abilities.
• Staff use effective strategies to help support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) to make good progress in their learning and development. They use picture cards and sign language when communicating and this supports children's understanding and language skills effectively.
• Staff plan an array of interesting adult-led learning activities for children. Overall, children are making good progress across the curriculum. However, at times, staff do not have a clear enough focus on the learning intent for these activities. Therefore, children do not always achieve what staff expect, preventing them from making even more progress.
• Staff promote positive behaviour through play. For example, as younger children actively attempt to climb up and slide down soft-play resources, staff encourage them to take turns. Children learn to develop their social skills for their future learning.
• Staff offer children a wealth of rich learning experiences that capture children's interests. Younger children inquisitively watch tadpoles moving in the pond in the community garden. These experiences support children's curiosity and they learn and develop an interest in the world around them.
• Overall, staff interact well with children to support their communication and language skills. Staff have discussions with older children. For example, they talk about how they recently grew potatoes in the garden and enjoyed eating them in a potato salad for tea. However, at times, staff do not always support communication and language skills with younger children, and opportunities for them to further extend their vocabulary are not always promoted.
• Parents speak very highly of the setting. They express that they feel very happy and well supported. Parents say that new children who have joined the setting have settled extremely well and that they feel reassured by the ongoing updates from staff. Parents discuss how communication about children's learning is shared daily, which enables them to extend children's learning at home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to focus clearly on the learning intentions, particularly for adult-led activities, to further extend children's learning
• increase opportunities for younger children to build on new vocabulary and further develop their language skills.