The Wallops Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children have strong attachments with staff, particularly their key person. They happily come into the pre-school and confidently select resources to play with. Staff support children as they learn to meet their basic hygiene needs. For example, children use a 'snuffle station' equipped with tissues when they need to wipe their noses. Staff discuss reasons why children need to wipe their noses and wash their hands after with them as children learn about germs.

Staff use daily routines to develop children's independence skills. For example, young children take pride in dressing themselves ready for the outdoors. Children develop an in-depth understanding of the world around them through visitors and outings. For example, they meet the local beekeeper and fire service and visit the local farm. Children also regularly take part in forest school. This helps to give children a wide breadth of experiences during their time at the pre-school. For example, children learn to keep themselves safe around a fire as they cook their snack of strudel and custard.

Staff have high expectations of children and their behaviour. Children confidently share the 'golden rules' of the pre-school, such as using kind words with each other. This is evident in the good relationships children have with one another. They develop a positive awareness of people's differences and happily include each other in their play.

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

• The manager has created a curriculum that has high expectations for all children. It focuses on children's confidence and independence. There is also a key focus on developing children's understanding of the world around them. Staff have received training and coaching on the curriculum. However, there are some inconsistencies in some staff's understanding of the aims of the curriculum. This impacts on staff's ability to support children's progress towards these aims.
• The manager is highly reflective and evaluative. She ensures that she includes staff when reflecting on the provision. This helps to continue to develop the pre-school and staff's practice to ensure they are consistently meeting children's needs. For example, recent reflections have led to changes to snack time. This is because staff feel that children benefit more from the social aspects of sitting down together. This also enables older children to model their independence skills to younger children as they self-serve their snack.
• Staff instinctively know how to help children regulate themselves and their emotions. They adapt the routine and environment constantly to ensure that children's needs are being met. For example, they provide children with quieter space that supports their sensory needs. This helps children, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, to make good progress in their learning and development.
• Staff develop children's literacy skills in a range of ways. They encourage children to create their own stories and eagerly listen as children act them out with puppets. Children happily listen as staff read them stories. Staff encourage children to talk about what they can see and relate it to children's experience. For example, as they look at pictures of rabbits, staff remind children about the rabbits they see in the fields.
• There are effective parent partnerships. Staff work hard to build positive attachments with parents as well as children. This helps children to feel safe and secure at the pre-school. They provide support to the whole family when it is needed, such as supporting them with speech and language referrals. Parents speak highly of the kind and compassionate staff. Staff provide parents with home learning ideas to support children further with their learning and development.
• Additional funding is used effectively to meet children's individual needs. For example, staff have purchased balancing blocks to support the development of children's core strength and balancing skills. This helps children to start to close the gaps in their development.
• Staff support children's developing language skills. For example, they model new vocabulary and encourage children to share their thoughts and ideas. However, on occasion, staff do not give children enough time to respond to questions before asking another. As a result, children do not always have time to process and share their response.
• The provider has not notified Ofsted of all the changes of committee members since the last inspection. However, those who have not had their suitability checked do not have access to confidential information or visit the pre-school unsupervised. Therefore, there is no impact on staff and children's well-being or safety.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen supervision and coaching to develop staff's understanding of the curriculum further
• develop staff's use of questions further so that children consistently have enough time to think and respond.