Tiddlywinks Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are greeted with warmth by cheerful, caring staff who are genuinely delighted to see them. The committed team takes the time to build strong connections with children and their families before they start. This ensures a seamless transition from home to pre-school. Individualised settling-in procedures cater to each child's unique needs. This allows them to quickly feel comfortable and eagerly participate in activities of their choice. Staff are gentle, nurturing and kind. They serve as strong role models who uphold high expectations for children's behaviour.

Staff make sure that reading books is an important part of the daily routine. Children listen to the stories enthusiastically, look at the books independently and recognise the familiar lines when staff read with them. Children show a real love of 'The Bear Hunt Cave,' where children enjoy accessing books throughout the day. This promotes children's development of a love of books and literacy. Children's interests are followed well and staff use these to plan activities to support them in their learning. For example, younger children enjoy exploring the small world farm animals and older children uses brushes to discover the dinosaur bones.

Children's physical development is promoted well. Children have opportunities to climb, balance and run freely in the outdoor area. This helps to develop children's large-muscle movements. Inside, children have opportunities to practice their fine motor skills. Pre-school children enjoy rolling, kneading and cutting the dough. This helps to develop their fine motor skills and supports their dexterity in early writing, in readiness for school.

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

• Leaders are passionate and strive for continual improvement. Staff feel that leaders prioritise their well-being. They receive regular supervision where they can discuss a range of issues. Leaders support staff to gain childcare qualifications to develop their career. This ensures that staff continually improve their teaching to help improve outcomes for children.
• Staff and leaders have worked hard to embed a high-quality provision for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, (SEND). Staff work closely with parents and other professionals to provide children with personalised support plans to help them make the best possible progress. Staff know children's individual needs well. Their learning environment has been carefully considered to ensure minimal distractions and provide a safe space. Any additional funding the pre-school receives is used to support children's individual needs.
• Overall, staff teach the curriculum very well. However, sometimes when children come together outside, the teaching does not closely match the most immediate learning needs of the children taking part. At these times, whilst children are happy, learning is not tailored to focus on what staff want children to learn next.
• Children benefit from a language-rich environment. Staff are animated as they read books and sing songs with actions, throughout the day. They use visual aids to help children's understanding and staff use simple sign language. These help children, including children who speak English as an additional language to be good communicators.
• Children are motivated to explore and investigate and, overall show good levels of curiosity and concentration. However, there are some occasions when children's engagement dips during child-initiated activities. For example, following lunch time when staff are completing tasks, children sometimes wait without adult support. During these brief times, children are not fully engaged in purposeful learning.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Staff work with parents to help children to settle and gather information about the family and children's developmental progress. They routinely share information about children's experiences and their focus for future learning. Regular stay-and-play sessions, parents' evenings and special celebration events provide good opportunities for parents to spend time with their children in the pre-school.
• Children generally behave towards each other with kindness and enjoy playing together. For example, children who finish at lunchtime return to cuddle their friends, as they forgot to do so on first leaving. Children hug their friends goodbye and say, 'see you tomorrow'. Staff are good at supporting children to build friendships and there is a real sense of this at pre-school.
• Staff teach children about healthy choices and lifestyles, including the nutritional benefits of food. Children develop strong self-help skills and independence.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• improve and focus teaching more precisely on what children would most benefit from learning next, particularly when children are in the outside area
• support staff to encourage all children to get involved and engaged in meaningful learning, especially during times when they have free choice of activities.