Wargrave Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and safe at this welcoming pre-school. They have warm and affectionate relationships with the consistent staff, who know them well. Staff plan and provide a varied curriculum, which helps to support children's engagement, curiosity and exploration. Staff incorporate children's interests to help maximise learning opportunities. For example, staff know children enjoy sensory play. Therefore, they provide many activities that allow children to explore with media and materials, such as dough, paint, glitter and real vegetables. All children show they are motivated and confident to explore and investigate. This helps them to develop a good range of skills to help prepare them for their next stage in learning.

Children behave well and show kindness to their friends. Staff encourage children to share and take turns, and they use consistent and effective strategies to help them learn this skill. Children enjoy a good range of toys, resources and activities that support their learning and development. They make choices about their play and are encouraged well by staff to be independent. For instance, staff praise children as they do things for themselves, such as putting on their coats. Overall, staff provide good interactions with children to support their speaking and listening skills.

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

• The management team and staff work well together. They have daily chats to review the plans for the day, which includes a review of the focus for individual children. Staff comment that they feel valued and supported and have regular opportunities to develop their practice further through attending training. Staff benefit from supervision meetings. However, the ongoing coaching and mentoring of staff is not streamlined effectively to help them improve their quality of teaching.
• Staff support children's communication and language skills well through conversations, questioning and the use of sign language. Staff incorporate activities that enhance children's listening and attention, such as interactive singing and dance sessions, which all children are seen to enjoy. Children are captivated and engaged imaginatively in active story sessions, where some staff skilfully add props to bring the stories alive.
• Children's health is well supported. Children have many opportunities to be physically active. Staff understand the importance of developing children's gross motor skills, and they support this well. For example, children practise and refine their coordination skills as they negotiate space when climbing on play equipment, flying kites and building towers higher than themselves. Children are supported well at mealtimes. Staff talk to them about healthy foods, which helps children to learn and understand the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
• Staff have effective partnerships with parents. From the beginning, staff collect and gather 'All About Me' information from the parents to help staff know and understand children's care routines and individual needs, which helps with the smooth transition into pre-school. Parents comment that they and their children are happy and that they receive plenty of good communication, support and guidance from the staff.
• Staff have a suitable understanding of the significance of working in partnership with other providers of care for the children. However, they do not make the best use of all opportunities to build on these partnerships further to help enhance continuity in children's care and learning. Despite this, good methods are in place to work with health care professionals that are involved in children's development.
• Staff provide and maintain a safe and welcoming environment for the children to play and learn. Staff at the inspection were seen to be well deployed, and good safety protocols were followed. Suitable policies and procedures are in place. However, a recent breach in staff not maintaining procedures resulted in a notification to Ofsted, but there was a failure to notify other agencies. Nevertheless, procedures have been modified to minimise this oversight in the future and to ensure all children are accounted for when returning to the premises.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review and improve methods of coaching and mentoring to further enhance and build on the quality of staff practice to even higher levels
• strengthen partnerships with other early years settings that children attend to develop more effective ways to share information about their learning and development.