Young Explorers Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff use their comprehensive knowledge of child development to help children make good progress. They provide children with numerous exciting resources and activities, which they use to implement the ambitious curriculum. Staff focus strongly on replicating the indoor curriculum outdoors, which they use to further extend children's learning.

Staff help children develop the skills they need for future learning, such as good concentration. For example, children are completely transfixed as they watch and listen to staff using a play theatre and puppets to tell stories. Children's literacy development is reinforced, for example, as staff respond to their requests to use these resources to re-tell the stories themselves.

Staff support children well to develop good physical skills. For example, they give them time to use wooden planks and other items to create constructions that include ramps. Children thoroughly enjoy using these resources and develop good balancing skills, as they walk carefully and independently along the ramps.

Staff are positive role models. They teach children to be polite and behave well. Children understand and cooperate with the well-known daily routine. They feel safe and develop good social skills. This is evident as children happily smile and wave at their friends arriving at the pre-school and tell them they have missed them.

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

• Staff communicate and interact with children very well. They join in children's play and skilfully use what they say and do to extend their language development. Staff provide additional small group activities, for example, to develop children's understanding of the meaning of words, vocabulary and how to form sentences. All children, including those who are learning English as an additional language, become confident talkers. Children talk confidently with staff about past and future events, such as their holidays and plans to decorate their house for Christmas.
• Staff support children's mathematical development well. For example, they provide opportunities for children to look for a Christmas elf in the play area and identify the different number it is attached to each day. Children develop a great sense of achievement as they learn to count baubles and identify numbers on pictures of Christmas trees. Staff help children to find and match numbers on the trees and use pegs to attach them together to make a pair.
• Staff know all the children very well. They use their good knowledge of children's individual needs and interests to extend their learning. Overall, managers have improved how they monitor children's development. However, they do not review that staff consistently broaden children's learning in all areas of the curriculum.
• Staff work well with parents to reduce any gaps in children's development. The special educational needs coordinator seeks early intervention for children when needed. Staff support children who are behind in their development to help them catch up.
• Staff have a caring, kind approach. They patiently meet children's emotional needs and teach them to share and take turns. For example, when children play with the building blocks and dressing-up clothes they learn to share these resources with their friends.
• Children develop good pre-writing skills. For example, they learn to trace and create patterns using small tree twigs in artificial snow. Staff extend this learning, for instance, as they ask children to identify similar shapes in the room.
• Children are motivated learners. They confidently choose and use the activities and develop good independence. For example, they wash their hands, organise their packed lunch boxes and use safe knives to cut fruit to eat at snack time.
• Managers and staff focus strongly on including parents and extended family in children's learning. For instance, parents are invited into the pre-school to play the guitar, talk about the meaning of Chinese New Year and make Christmas decorations with the children. Additionally, parents volunteer to read books in dual languages to groups of children. Managers also provide social events where parents of children who speak English as an additional language get to know and support each other.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• improve how staff support all children to to further broaden their learning in all areas of the curriculum.