The Little People Preschool And Playgroup Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff are highly skilled in promoting children's emotional and physical well-being. They adopt a nurturing and responsive approach. Children benefit from excellent relationships with staff, regular outdoor play, gardening activities and obstacle courses, all of which support both mental and physical health. Children are very happy, calm and emotionally secure. They flourish in this nurturing and inspiring pre-school. Staff are excellent and caring role models. Children are polite and their behaviour is exemplary.

Leaders and staff demonstrate exceptional commitment to offer a high-quality curriculum which is responsive to all children's individual stages of development. Interactions are high quality, exciting and engaging and spark children's love for learning. For example, children play in a mud kitchen making 'bug salads' and 'worm pies'. They follow instructions from recipe cards and think critically about what ingredients they will use. Staff gather expert knowledge about children's previous experiences. They use this knowledge exceptionally well to plan a broad range of opportunities that ensure children are continuously learning new knowledge and skills. Staff take all children to the library and support them in gaining memberships and they organise visits from companies who bring reptiles for children to hold and learn about. Children demonstrate high levels of engagement and enthusiasm.

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

• Leaders provide highly effective and inspirational support to all staff. They engage staff in rigorous supervision sessions and sharply focused professional development. Staff benefit from peer observations, bespoke coaching and quizzes. Staff are confident, knowledgeable and consistently deliver high-quality teaching.
• The curriculum is thoughtfully designed and expertly sequenced. The ambitious educational programme facilitates teaching which is targeted, purposeful and builds on children's prior knowledge and experiences. Children make rapid progress in their learning and development from their starting points.
• Leaders and staff ensure that all children access an inclusive curriculum. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities receive expertly tailored support and benefit from learning that is precisely matched to their needs. This inclusive approach helps all children thrive.
• Staff build highly effective relationships with parents. Parents receive comprehensive information about children's learning and development and care needs. They borrow resources from the 'Borrowers Burrow' to extend children's learning at home. The highly effective partnerships support a fully consistent approach between home and pre-school.
• Leaders and staff work collaboratively and effectively with external professionals. They work closely with several specialists to implement tailored support plans. This proactive and coordinated approach helps every child receive the support they need.
• Staff are highly effective at developing confident and independent children. Children are encouraged to test out their own ideas and are consistently praised for their efforts. For example, children use a range of materials to make model snails. Staff encourage children to work out how they will hold the materials together to make the different features. This builds on children's experiences of caring for an African snail in the pre-school and reading stories about snails. Children show high levels of self-esteem, a genuine enthusiasm for learning and are keen to explore and investigate.
• Staff in the pre-school prioritise children's communication and language development throughout the curriculum. Staff provide a wealth of rich communication experiences to extend children's listening, understanding and speech. They introduce ambitious vocabulary, such as 'metamorphosis' to deepen children's understanding. Children are confident communicators who have excellent levels of understanding and express their needs and ideas with clarity.
• Staff are highly skilled at supporting children's personal, social and emotional development. They teach children about emotions through a dedicated emotions area, carefully chosen books and family photo albums. This helps children develop excellent skills in understanding, naming and talking about their feelings. They build secure relationships and manage their behaviour with increasing independence.
• Staff provide a rich and varied physical development programme that supports both gross and fine motor skills. Children engage in daily outdoor play, obstacle courses, toothbrushing routines and dance activities. Children have bags of mark-making materials that they carry round to engage in early writing activities in many different ways. These experiences promote healthy lifestyles and physical confidence.
• Staff create a respectful and inclusive environment where children feel valued and ready to learn. They use consistent, well-embedded strategies to help children understand the expectations of how to behave. Children demonstrate exemplary behaviour, show kindness to others and develop highly positive attitudes towards learning and each other.