Willow Tree Pre School Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children have a happy time in the company of caring staff, who clearly enjoy their roles here. The curriculum is planned in a way that promotes children's self-motivated learning. This means that children have plenty of time to explore and play. Younger children concentrate hard as they try out the sturdy, indoor stepping stones. They busily repeat the activity and their confidence and balance visibly improve. Pre-school children eagerly seek out their favourite dressing-up outfits. They resume cooperative role-play games that develop over days and weeks. The games encourage children to communicate their own ideas and to listen to those of other children.

Staff devise consistent routines and teach children to follow them. This helps children to feel calm and secure. They begin to regulate their own behaviour because they know what to do. For example, at lunchtime children place their lunch boxes on the table and leave them closed until everyone is seated. The simple routine promotes children's polite, social interaction. Parents and carers work in partnership with staff to promote children's well-being. When the weather is warm, parents apply sun cream to children's skin before bringing them to pre-school. This lightens staff's workload and helps everyone to protect children from the harmful effects of the sun.

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

• Staff model friendly relationships and teamwork. They work hard to continuously improve their professional knowledge and skills. There is currently a focus on developing staff's questioning techniques. They are learning to ask even more questions that require children to express their own thinking. This involves allowing children more time to give an answer. Staff value and build on children's responses. This helps children to become successful learners.
• Staff's incidental interactions with children are often of high quality. Pre-school children tell staff how they think spaghetti is cooked. Staff listen encouragingly to children's ideas. This helps them to assess children's existing knowledge and to extend it. However, there are instances of staff not creating enough planned reasons for younger children to hold conversations and to learn new words. This does not promote children's swiftest progress towards fluent speech.
• Children's physical development is promoted well. Children carefully insert strands of dry spaghetti into the holes of an upturned colander. This promotes their hand-eye coordination and pincer grasp. Pre-school children ride scoot-along bikes with increasing confidence. They take split-second evasive action when another child walks onto the slope that they were speeding towards. The exercise promotes children's stamina, coordination and balance.
• Children know the behaviour that is expected of them at different times of the day. They gather on the carpet and know that it is time to sit and listen. At other times. their play is more fluid. This requires them to take account of each other when deciding what to do next. Staff show children how to ask each other for a turn on the bike. They praise children's kindness and patience. This helps children to become tolerant and respectful of others.
• Staff regularly read books to children. Children listen to and discuss the stories. They begin to notice familiar written letters and words in the text. They learn that the facial expressions, depicted in the pictures, tell them what the characters might be thinking or feeling. Children's obvious enjoyment of stories promotes their readiness to read when the time comes.
• Children learn mathematical vocabulary in meaningful contexts. Pre-school children help to prepare snack. They count out 'enough' crackers for children to have 'one each'. This promotes their understanding of one-to-one correspondence. Staff ask younger children where their discarded sun hat should go. Children point at their head and hear staff say the words 'on your head'. This promotes children's early understanding of positional words.
• Staff help children to develop habits that promote their good health. They actively encourage children to take regular drinks of water and teach them why it is important. Other routines promote children's growing independence. Children change their footwear between indoor and outdoor play. The regular practice helps them to learn left from right. Staff notice and praise children's effort. Children feel proud when they complete the task by themselves.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• sharpen planning for extending and reinforcing children's vocabulary and conversation skills.