Littlebourne Ladybirds Pre-School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children are happy, confident and motivated learners.

They generally behave well and are gaining a good understanding of sharing and taking turns. Staff build on children's confidence and sense of belonging well. For example, they constantly praise children for their achievements.

Staff form strong bonds with them and their families. This leads to a warm and nurturing environment, felt throughout the whole setting. Staff work closely with parents to ensure that children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make a strong start to their learning.

Staff place a strong focus on deve...loping children's communication and language skills. For instance, they talk constantly to the children and model new language. They emphasise key words within their interactions to enhance children's understanding and speaking skills.

Staff use pictures to help children make choices and understand routines.Children develop good physical well-being. For example, they enjoy growing their own healthy produce, such as tomatoes and strawberries, at the pre-school allotment.

Children delight in collecting the eggs from the pre-school's chickens as they learn about the life cycle of a hen. They enjoy physical challenges, particularly in the exciting pre-school garden.

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

The manager and staff get to know children's abilities and interests and plan activities that they enjoy.

Staff regularly check how children are progressing to help them know how to further support their learning. Staff create an interesting environment with a good mix of child-led and adult-guided play. However, at times, staff do not use opportunities to test out and challenge children's thinking skills as effectively as possible.

The manager and staff use funding effectively and work in good partnership with other professionals when children need extra help. Parents speak very highly of this support, which enables their children to make good progress in their learning and development.The manager and staff evaluate their practice together effectively.

For instance, they regularly discuss how well the day's events and the environment interested children to learn. Staff use their findings to support their future activity plans as well as enhancements required to effectively meet the children's learning needs. This helps keep children engaged and motivated in their learning experiences.

The manager and staff are keen to keep up to date with new early years information and build on their skills and knowledge even further. They attend beneficial training. For example, they have learned about the different strategies to support children in their communication and language skills.

The staff team has a good understanding of how to help children move on in their learning. Staff skilfully adapt activities for children of different ages. For example, during a story time activity, staff encourage younger children to engage in discussion about what is happening in the book and recall events that happen throughout the story.

They challenge older children effectively to explore familiar letter sounds at the beginning of some words within the book. This helps to enhance children's early literacy skills. However, staff do not always make effective use of opportunities to extend children's understanding of mathematical concepts, such as counting or size.

Staff encourage children to chop fruit and pour their own drinks during cooking activities and snack time. Children also wash their dishes afterwards. Children make choices and direct their own play and learning.

This helps to support their growing independence and gives them confidence in their own abilities. Children learn to care for the world around them and have a good understanding of how to recycle their rubbish and why. Children independently select the correct bins for their litter throughout their day in pre-school.

Children develop a good understanding of diversity. For example, they enjoy exploring the environment, which includes positive cultural images and dual language text, including books and role-play resources.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

The manager and staff have a good understanding of how to protect children. They complete safeguarding training to ensure that they have a secure knowledge of the procedures to follow if they identify any concerns about a child's welfare. All staff complete the appropriate recruitment checks to ensure they are suitable to work with children.

They are deployed effectively and remain vigilant about children's security. Staff carry out daily checks of the premises and garden to make sure potential risks are minimised.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: build on staff's use of questioning to help support children's thinking skills and learning further provide children with more opportunities to develop their understanding and awareness of mathematics.

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