Triangle Pre-school

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy their time at pre-school and develop secure relationships with staff, who are immensely caring. Children and staff have fun together. For instance, a child asks a member of staff to help her draw a picture of a dog. The member of staff follows the child's instructions carefully. They take turns to draw each body part of the dog and laugh together at the pictures they create. This demonstrates that children feel safe, secure, and develop a sense of belonging.

Children develop a love of stories and rhymes. This not only supports their language development but also helps children make connections within their learning. For instance, staff make story times fully interactive. They ask children lots of questions about what they have heard and what they can see. Staff help secure children's understanding further by linking the story to real-life experiences. For example, staff connect the footprints in the story with the footprints children made in the garden earlier in the day.

Staff have high expectations of children's behaviour and help them develop a clear understanding of the rules and why these are important. For example, during welcome time children recall what they remember about each rule. Staff validate children's contributions, before providing clear explanations to promote safety and well-being. For instance, children learn that listening to adults helps keep them safe. This supports children to make good decisions.

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

• The manager and their team create and deliver an ambitious curriculum that reflects the learning needs of the children. Staff interactions support children's learning well. However, on occasion, some staff do not use all opportunities to extend children's learning fully. For example, while playing with the tea set, staff miss opportunities to introduce new ideas by engaging in children's imaginative play. This means that not all children have the same opportunities to reach their fullest potential.
• Children learn to be effective communicators. Staff support children's developing language and communication skills well. They engage children in regular conversation and ask them lots of open-ended questions. They adapt their language to meet the varying needs of children. Staff use communication aids effectively to provide children, who are at an earlier stage in their development, or those who speak English as an additional language, with a voice. Children also learn simple sign language, which helps children to communicate with others and make their needs and desires known.
• Staff introduce children to new concepts, including mathematics. This helps prepare children well for their next stage in learning. For example, children explore height and measure as they build tall towers in the garden, stretching up high to reach the top. Children then use the bricks to create a path. They work in collaboration to collect the bricks and lay them in a pattern. Children take turns to walk along the 'narrow path', concentrating as they maintain their balance. Staff introduce appropriate positional language, such as 'over, under, left' and 'right'.
• Staff help children learn how to keep themselves healthy through engaging activities. For instance, children learn about the importance of maintaining good oral health. They practise their brushing skills as they draw germs and food on large mouth pictures, before adding toothpaste to their toothbrush and brushing the 'germs' away. Children taste the toothpaste and learn new facts, such as how many teeth they have. They identify healthy food and drinks and feed these to their mouth pictures. This helps children gain the knowledge they need to make healthy choices.
• Children develop good levels of independence, helping them become confident in doing things for themselves. For instance, children learn new techniques to help them put on their own shoes and coats. Staff plan physical sessions to help the oldest children learn to dress and undress themselves in a group setting. This helps children develop essential life skills, as well as preparing them well for their next stage in learning, including their eventual move to school.
• Partnership working is effective. The manager and their staff work well with other professionals, such as Portage and speech and language therapy, to ensure children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, or those with gaps in their learning, receive the intervention they need to catch up with their peers. Parents receive regular information about the setting, their children's progress and how they can further support their child's learning at home. Parents receive information via the online app, newsletters, and face-to-face meetings with staff. This helps create consistency between home and pre-school.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide children with consistently high-quality interactions, that continuously build on what children already know and enables them to make the best possible progress.