Minibugs St Austell

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Children develop exceptionally high levels of confidence and self-esteem in the care of the highly skilled and dedicated staff team.

Children are extremely happy. They flourish and excel in everything they do in this amazingly calm, engaging and nurturing environment.Babies share exceptionally close relationships with their key person and staff.

They confidently explore and investigate their surroundings, showing high levels of emotional security. Older children experience an extensive range of learning opportunities to support their excellent understanding of how to behave. Staff help children further in recogn...ising and discussing their emotions, so they are highly skilled at managing minor conflicts for themselves and have an excellent understanding of their own feelings and the feelings of others.

Staff have high expectations of all children. They precisely and meticulously plan an exciting and highly effective curriculum so that every child makes the best possible progress. Babies are exceptionally animated and skilled at communicating verbally, and they use sign language very successfully when responding to staff.

Toddlers' progress in their personal, social and emotional development is inspirational. They have extremely secure bonds with the staff and excellent relationships with one another. This is attributable to the exceptional way in which the highly trained and experienced staff interact with them.

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

A highly committed and inspirational manager leads the dedicated staff team. She has an incredible insight into each member of staff and their skills and knowledge. She monitors performance extremely effectively to maintain exceptionally high standards.

Staff are highly successful at using skills gained from training opportunities to extend and promote children's learning and development very effectively. They continually develop high-quality outdoor learning experiences to enrich children's curiosity further and ignite their imaginations extremely well. This is highly beneficial for those children who prefer to learn outdoors.

Children excitedly engage in a wealth of highly stimulating activities and learning experiences which build on their excellent vocabulary. For example, older children explore and investigate the properties of flour as they listen to a story about a little red hen and making bread. They make marks in the flour, which supports their early writing skills.

They use props and talk about the characters in the story. Staff very successfully support children's language as they develop their play and learning further when children pretend to make bread from play dough for members of their family.Staff interact with children superbly to inspire and engage them successfully.

They use their extensive knowledge of each child to expertly enhance and extend children's learning and understanding. For example, toddlers enthusiastically explore using their senses as they scoop out the inside of pumpkins, watch the seeds float or sink into the 'gloop' mixture and pretend to make pumpkin soup.Children's behaviour is impeccable.

They cooperate extremely well with each other. Children show an excellent understanding of the need to share and take turns so that they ensure play is harmonious and do not upset others.Staff actively and enthusiastically teach children to understand that there are different communities and experiences beyond their own.

They skilfully use stories, dance, language and creative activities to help children learn about different festivals from around the world. For example, during the inspection older children listened to Indian music and watched videos of people dancing to gain a better understanding of different cultures. They thoroughly enjoyed moving in time to the music and exploring the different sounds as they thought about the similarities and differences between this music and the music which is more familiar to them.

Partnerships with parents are extremely strong. The manager uses highly effective methods to involve parents in their children's learning. These include providing workshops which give parents ideas of how they can support their children's learning at home.

They have 'take home' activity packs, and the manager and staff provide advice on subjects such as potty training. Parents have the utmost praise for the manager and staff, their support and what they provide.Managers and staff are highly reflective and strongly committed to reviewing and developing their practice to ensure that every child has the best possible experiences.

Older children thoroughly enjoy taking part in the school readiness programme. They develop superb independence skills, excellent language and communication skills, and are extremely well prepared for school. This includes children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those in receipt of additional funding.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Managers and staff have an excellent understanding of child protection issues and knowledge of safeguarding. They keep their knowledge up to date through regular training and are extremely confident in recognising the signs or symptoms which may indicate a child is at risk from harm.

They are aware of how to report concerns, including the whistle-blowing procedure. Managers and staff make excellent use of robust risk assessments to minimise risks and keep children safe. They work very well in partnership with other professionals and agencies responsible for safeguarding to ensure children's safety.