Chollerton Pre-School Ltd

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

The highly skilled pre-school staff create an exceptionally nurturing and caring environment for children and their families.

There is a strong focus on promoting emotional literacy for children. This includes staff spending time with them to talk about their feelings and helping them to recognise a range of emotions. Children arrive in the morning eager to start their day.

They independently use name tags and attach them to a 'feelings board' to indicate their mood when they arrive. Staff encourage conversations, and they discuss how various situations may make children feel. This helps children to recognise th...eir own feelings and behaviours.

Children play harmoniously and form strong friendship groups. They show respect and kindness towards one another. This includes creating superb imaginary play games.

Children wear chef hats and aprons as they follow recipes in cookbooks. They use their mathematical skills as they find out how much of the different ingredients they need to create their mixture. Children show an excellent ability to extend their own pretend games.

This includes dressing up as a fire fighter and using toy extinguishers to put out an imaginary fire in the role-play area.There is a highly ambitious, broad and structured curriculum in place that helps to build children's knowledge in all areas of learning. Staff use accurate assessments to review planned activities and to support children to develop excellent skills, ready for school.

This includes excellent partnership working with the onsite school. Staff swiftly identify any gaps in children's learning and put excellent support strategies in place. This includes superb support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

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

Interactions between staff and children are superb. Children show deep levels of engagement in exciting adventures that staff create. For instance, staff expertly build on children's communication and language skills by using puppets and props as they retell traditional fairy tales.

Children bake their own gingerbread man, and then discover that he has 'escaped' from the oven. Staff continue magical make-believe stories and bring these to life for children. This includes children using magnifying glasses to look around the environment and following the clues of flour prints the gingerbread man has left behind.

Staff continually build on this learning and use photos of a gingerbread man puppet, showing his adventures around their local community. Children respond with awe and wonder as they relish in his tales to find out where he has visited.Parents are involved in all aspects of their children's care and learning.

They receive detailed communication from staff regarding children's observations and assessments. In addition, parents are invited into the setting on a weekly basis with their families to participate in well-planned stay and play sessions. Parents praise the manager and the staff for their commitment and passion for their roles.

Staff provide exciting home-link activity ideas for parents and children to enjoy at home. This helps to provide a continued approach to children's learning.Children develop excellent physical skills and spatial awareness.

They participate in complex obstacle courses in the large school yard. They use their whole bodies to dance to music. This includes using large props, such as a model dragon.

Staff use this to support children's understanding of Chinese New Year.The manager is extremely supportive of the staff team. Staff speak very highly of how they feel valued and listened to.

She promotes staff's well-being and completes very regular supervision sessions and team meetings. Staff are highly skilled and are eager to complete extensive training. They participate in the evaluation of the setting.

For instance, they are keen to complete forest-school training to extend their already superb outdoor learning opportunities for children.Staff are highly vigilant and alert to any indicators that a child may be exposed to a risk of harm. They encourage children to join in with risk assessments and learn how to keep themselves safe.

There are detailed child protection procedures in place. Staff share key messages with parents, including the safe use of the internet at home.Staff encourage children to develop a deep understanding of where food comes from.

Children experience caring for lambs on a farm. They grow their own fruit and vegetables and take part in cooking activities. Children show high levels of independence and follow excellent hygiene practices.

Staff provide key messages to parents at home about the importance of promoting dental hygiene. This helps children to lead a healthy lifestyle.Staff use excellent questioning techniques to help children to solve problems as they play.

Children experiment and use predictions in their learning. For instance, they spend long periods of time using wooden blocks and tubes to create ramps for toy cars. Children predict how fast their cars will move and discover by adding more blocks the car will move faster.

This helps to develop children's excellent thinking skills.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Safeguarding is effective: There is an open and positive culture around safeguarding that puts children's interests first.

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