The Pines Community Pre-School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Leaders and staff provide a welcoming and nurturing environment where all children flourish. Children have a positive attitude to learning.

They are eager to explore, investigate and find things out. They show high levels of emotional well-being, are self-assured and develop good social skills.The curriculum incorporates a forest school outdoor educational experience, where children visit local woodland on a regular basis.

This helps them to learn about the natural environment, how to handle risks and to use their own initiative to solve problems and cooperate with others. During these experiences, children develop an ...understanding of boundaries of behaviour, grow in confidence, become self-motivated to learn and benefit from some physical activity. However, there are less opportunities for children to exercise when in the pre-school environment.

Staff work well together as a committed and enthusiastic team. They have high expectations for every child. They work extremely effectively with parents and other professionals, to ensure that any child who needs additional help quickly receives the support they need to enable them to progress.

Overall, staff interact well with children, and children respond positively to them. However, some staff interactions with children are not as effective as they could be, to ensure that children sustain high levels of concentration throughout all activities.

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

A well-established key-person system promotes children's emotional well-being and helps them to form secure attachments.

When children first start attending the setting, staff meet with parents to find out about children's unique characteristics and what they enjoy. This enables them to provide activities and experiences based on children's interests and needs.Children follow robust hygiene practices and staff provide healthy snacks.

They give children clear and consistent messages about making healthy food choices as part of leading a healthy lifestyle. As part of their forest school experience, children benefit from climbing trees and pulling themselves up slopes using ropes. However, children are unable to run around when in the pre-school garden, as staff have not organised the area well enough to ensure there is an open space free from other resources.

The experienced team provides a good range of activities that promote children's enjoyment and learning effectively. Staff use children's existing experiences and current interests to help them acquire new knowledge. For example, when children talk about shadows that they see in books, staff take them outdoors to look for shadows and talk about how these are created.

Staff act as very good role models. They respond well to the manager's high expectations and desire to provide all children, including those with special educational needs, with high-quality provision. Accurate assessments of children's learning enable them to plan for their individual needs and provide enjoyable activities that motivate all children to join in.

Staff demonstrate a good understanding of how children learn and develop. They have interesting conversations with them. Children benefit from the good amount of questions that the staff ask them, to help encourage their language and thinking skills.

However, staff with less experience miss opportunities to ask children questions, to establish their level of understanding and help maintain their concentration during some activities.Partnerships with parents are strong. Leaders and staff offer a good range of initiatives to engage, support and build on parents' interest in their children's development.

They regularly discuss children's progress with them and have used additional funding to purchase resources, including books, to encourage parents to support children's learning at home.Staff successfully promote children's communication and language. Young children follow the actions and sing along to favourite songs and rhymes.

Older children listen attentively to familiar stories and make links to their own experiences.Staff give children choices in their play. When children choose to play with large blocks, staff demonstrate how to build towers.

Children watch closely and copy what they have seen. When the bricks fall, staff help children try different ways to secure the tower. Staff also use these opportunities to incorporate mathematics, for example by asking children which is taller, them or the tower.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Leaders have a good knowledge of how to support children's welfare. They follow safe recruitment and vetting procedures, to ensure that staff working with children are suitable.

All staff have completed relevant training and understand how to keep children safe. They are aware of the signs that a child may be at risk of harm, and what to do if they have any concerns.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: continue to support less-experienced staff, to help strengthen their teaching skills even further review the organisation of the outdoor area so that children benefit from being more physically active in their play.

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