West Kingsdown Pre-school

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children and their families are at the heart of this incredibly caring setting. Staff nurture children's emotional well-being exceptionally well. They provide personalised support to ensure all children settle very securely and, as such, children develop very strong bonds with staff. Children develop high levels of self-esteem as staff continuously praise and encourage them. Children demonstrate excellent behaviour and attitudes. For example, they immediately settle to join in with rhyming games, and are enthralled listening intently for different letter sounds, remaining highly engaged and interested. These activities support children's communication and attention skills very effectively.

Staff plan an extensive variety of opportunities to widen children's knowledge of their local community. They encourage children to help others by fundraising for local groups. Children donate food items to the 'community cupboard' and bring in their own clothes and coats to support the donation bank. This very effectively supports children's understanding of responsibility and respect for those around them. Staff have very high expectations for all children. Those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are provided with excellent support. Staff use sign language to help children's understanding and are incredibly patient in their approach. Children who are non-verbal when they start become confident communicators. All children make significant progress from their starting points.

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

• Staff are excellent role models, demonstrating kindness and care towards children. As a direct result, older children immediately help their younger friends to line up, reminding them sensitively about the rules. Children are very polite and well mannered.
• Children learn to be incredibly inclusive to others. Staff support children's understanding of others very successfully. They encourage children to share family photographs and talk very positively about their friends backgrounds and cultures. As such, children demonstrate high levels of respect for others.
• Staff provide exceptional support for children with SEND. They provide excellent one-to-one support, creating personalised plans to ensure all children make significant progress. Children who did not speak when they started, now talk confidently. Children with SEND achieve the best possible outcomes.
• Staff use every opportunity to extend children's skills. They develop children's vocabulary by using phrases such as 'deep rolling ocean' to describe the sea when reading stories children are interested in. Staff organise the local library to be open, ensuring children have regular access to books to develop a love of reading.
• Children benefit from highly engaging activities to promote their creativity.
• Children sustain very high levels of engagement when creating their own play dough sculptures with a range of different resources. Staff skilfully pose challenges to encourage children to problem-solve supporting their thinking skills very well.
• Staff very effectively promote children's mathematical understanding. Children are encouraged to count items in their lunch bags and do so excitedly. They delight in sharing out their 'pennies' and are fascinated learning how to take away. These activities very successfully develop children's learning.
• Leaders and managers are incredibly proactive and hardworking. Funding is used highly effectively to enhance opportunities for children to learn about sustainability. Children help to create a growing garden, where they sow seeds and grow fruits and vegetables to take home. They go regularly to carefully collect eggs from a local chicken coup to further develop their understanding of where food comes from.
• Leaders and managers ensure staff are highly trained and qualified. They support other settings locally by collaborating closely to continually improve provision. Excellent processes are in place to support children's transitions to school. Staff ensure children and families are very well supported. Links with local partners is excellent, ensuring children and their families access their full entitlement to quality care and education.
• Partnerships with parents are very strong. Parents value highly the help, advice and guidance they get. They report that the home visits offered, help them personally and they look forward to sessions specifically organise for them, such as grandparents' day and pamper sessions. They talk of the significant progress their children have made in speech, language, independence and confidence.