The Saplings Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive at the setting, enthusiastic and ready to learn. They quickly connect with their friends and explore all activities on offer, together or independently. Children form close bonds with staff who are consistently kind and caring. As a result, children feel safe and secure. They thoroughly enjoy stories being read to them individually by members of staff. At these times, they listen intently, giggle at funny parts of the story and share happy moments together. This helps to promote positive relationships and mutual respect.

Children develop good social skills. They behave well and show empathy towards others. Children learn about different emotions and how these are portrayed. For instance, if friends get upset, they gently rub their backs and talk to them reassuringly to make them happy again. Children are praised for their efforts as they model the setting's values, such as 'kind hands'. This makes them feel valued and proud.

Children love being active outdoors. They show great control and coordination as they participate in the many exciting activities on offer. Children learn that they can improve their skills and achieve anything if they persevere. For example, they practise using just the right amount of power to make a large ball land in a basketball net. This also supports children's hand-to-eye coordination and spatial awareness.

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

• The manager is committed to providing high quality care and education. She makes regular assessments of children to identify their needs and to monitor the good progress they make. As a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's development, the manager has identified areas of the curriculum to focus on more. This includes personal, social and emotional development and communication and language. This has proved effective as children demonstrate improved confidence, independence and concentration.
• The special educational needs coordinator plays a leading role in supporting children to make progress where there are persistent gaps in their learning. She works effectively with staff and parents to help individual children make good progress from their starting points. For example, children with speech delays are shown real objects to understand the transition from one routine to the next, such as a knife and fork to indicate mealtimes. This process is later replaced with photos and then symbols to help them make connections and understand better.
• Staff know how to promote children's communication skills. They use children's favourite stories and songs. For instance, younger children delight in moving to the beat of nursery rhymes, while the older ones join in tunefully with the lyrics and actions. Children make up different sounds to verses in the song, 'Wheels on the bus'. In this way, children's vocabulary is increased further.
• Children's critical thinking skills are promoted well. They eagerly explore and test out their ideas on a problem that may arise as they play. For example, children roll a toy car along tubing and put a basket at the end to 'catch' it. After a few misses, they realise that moving the basket forward and back, is a good strategy to arriving at a solution.
• Staff's wellbeing is given the utmost priority. They comment on the manager's supportive nature, which has helped to lead to high staff morale. Overall, the manager monitors staff's practice and supports them to improve, leading to good outcomes for children. However, this process is not fully consistent for every member of staff. As a result, some staff are less confident about what they want children to learn and how this should be implemented.
• The manager and staff recognise the significance of raising children's awareness of other cultures. They do this by preparing activities related to an event, such as Chinese New Year. However, children's home backgrounds and languages are yet to be fully explored to support their understanding of similarities and differences between their own and others' cultures.
• Parents highly value the support, care and advice they and their children receive from the manager and her staff. They are impressed with the good progress children make and appreciate that each child and family are treated as individuals. This strong partnership provides continuity of support to children, such as adopting the 'tidy up' song at home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• sharpen existing procedures for monitoring individual staff's practice to help them enhance children's learning even further
• consider more ways to enhance children's awareness of the diversity of cultures represented in the setting to enable children to make connections between their own and others' heritage.