Tunstead Playgroup

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children feel happy and secure in this cosy setting. Parents say that they and their children feel like 'part of the nursery family'. Children enjoy their time with staff, who read them familiar stories. Children eagerly join in with the sentence they know is coming next. They use their imagination and show their creativity during craft activities. These opportunities help to develop the small muscles in their hands. Children spontaneously create catching games with familiar adults. They demonstrate impressive hand-eye coordination as they catch and throw small balls with accuracy. Children take safe risks as they negotiate climbing frames and see-saw bridges. They enjoy their time playing outside, where they learn how to manoeuvre skilfully on wheeled toys. This supports the development of children's balance and coordination.

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, staff are providing children with even greater support in relation to developing their communication and language, and social and emotional development. Children can be regularly heard using new terminology they have learned from staff in their general conversations. They speak with confidence and great fluency. Children are kind and considerate of their friends, behave well and play happily alongside each other. They feel safe in this setting and are well cared for by the nurturing staff.

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

• The staff pride themselves in the strong partnerships they have with parents and carers. They obtain lots of valuable information from parents before children start. This is used to support children in making the best possible progress from the outset. Parents all know who their child's key person is, and valuable information about how children are progressing is shared frequently. Staff are skilled in sharing information with parents, which helps to extend children's learning to home.
• Overall, children's developing independence is supported well. Children learn to use the toilet and know when to wash their hands. They are confident to select the activities they take part in from the well-resourced environment. However, sometimes staff do things for children that they should be learning to do for themselves, in readiness for school. They do not consistently help children develop highly responsible attitudes, such as to look after toys and tidy away after play.
• Staff work closely with other services to provide highly effective support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). This means that those children who need additional specialist support receive highly tailored education and care that best meets their needs. Staff work closely with children with SEND and have expert knowledge of how to help them learn. They act promptly to remove barriers to children's progress so all children make good progress from their starting points.
• Overall, the curriculum is appropriately challenging. However, there are occasions when staff do not give children the chance to try and find solutions to problems for themselves. This limits opportunities for children to develop the resilience needed for when future learning may become more challenging.
• Since the previous inspection, notable improvements have been made in developing younger children's listening and attention skills. Staff ask children questions to maintain their interest and to check their understanding. Staff also follow children's interests to extend activities and set them challenges. For example, when children have shown an interest in the animals from a story, staff extend this by introducing new and less well known animals.
• Staff help children to learn about a range of festivals that teach them about other cultures. Additionally, there are toys and resources that represent different ethnicities, and books that help children learn about different families. Staff lead activities where children paint portraits of a person of their choosing in the setting. The staff use this to build on children's knowledge of what makes every person unique by celebrating both differences and similarities.
• Leaders ensure that observations of what children know and can do are completed regularly. These inform accurate planning for the next steps in children's learning. These observations, together with effective meetings with staff, help leaders to improve the quality of education provided to children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support the staff to improve their understanding of how to help children think for themselves so that they can try to solve problems independently
• support children to develop responsible attitudes towards expected behaviour.