Little Fishes, St Peters

A church-hall preschool where children grow food for snack time and families help shape how the setting runs: Little Fishes, St Peters has a recognisable community character. Its main hall opens into a garden with space for sensory exploration, fruit trees and vegetable growing. Children can choose between indoor and outdoor activities, giving the surroundings a practical role in their learning.

At its 28 January 2025 inspection, Ofsted rated the preschool Good, found safeguarding effective and judged that children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, made good progress. The qualifications to that positive picture matter: group activities did not consistently hold younger children's attention, and staff sometimes missed children who needed encouragement to participate.

Based at St. Peters Church Hall on Ash Church Road, Ash, Aldershot, GU12 6LU, the preschool has 32 places in total. It accepts children over two and below school age. Attendance is term-time, with a morning pattern and lunch extensions rather than an all-year childcare offer.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the learning, development and care framework here. In practice, children encounter early sounds and numbers through rhymes, games and structured play, alongside opportunities to build physical skills and get along with others.

Choice is built into the layout. Children move between the hall and garden, selecting activities such as dressing up, water play, music and mark-making. Adult-guided cooking, card-making and gardening sit alongside that independent exploration. The balance gives children both scope to pursue an interest and opportunities to learn with an adult's help.

The pond board makes the morning routine personal: each child places their named fish on it before the opening group gathering. Later, coloured key groups bring children together for an activity planned around the interests and abilities their key person knows. These key groups bring children together within the preschool day.

In January 2025, everyday play included counting, comparing quantities and exploring measurement through construction. Story sessions involved expressive reading and predictions about what might happen next.

Outdoor and Community Life

The sensory garden offers plants with contrasting scents, colours and textures, while a separate growing area includes apple and plum trees. Children sow, water, weed and plant, following the process through to harvesting and tasting produce at snack time. Potatoes, carrots, spring onions and strawberries have all been grown. Food therefore becomes something children help produce, as well as something they eat.

An enclosed garden and covered outdoor area extend the usable play space. In January 2025, children used bicycles and outdoor apparatus to practise coordination and balance.

Family involvement also reaches beyond the daily timetable. A spring or summer outing is part of the preschool's activities, with parents encouraged to accompany their child; Bocketts Farm is one named outing destination. It is an example, rather than a promised annual venue.

The Christmas production includes the children singing and wearing nativity costumes, with families invited to watch. Occasional family church services reinforce the setting's church connection. Summer activities include a sports afternoon beginning with a family picnic, while children moving on to school have a leavers lunch with their parents.

Relationships and Communication

Each child has a key worker who helps them settle, tracks achievements and identifies what to work on next.

A home link book provides a regular channel between families and the key worker, and staff are available for conversations around the session. Bubbles can also accompany a child on a trip or holiday, with a diary for parents to record the experience. That offers a simple bridge between home experiences and preschool conversation.

In January 2025, staff comforted children when needed, offered reassurance and used praise throughout the day. They also helped children work through sharing disagreements by encouraging cooperation.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

Bubbles Groups provide targeted small-group work on speech, language and social skills: the SENCo and assistant run two groups twice weekly, working towards individual children's targets. Parents are involved when additional support is identified, and referrals can include portage or occupational therapy. The team also includes special-needs support roles providing individual and small-group assistance.

The staff team includes a practitioner with a degree in Early Years and Childhood studies. Staff undertake continuing professional training, and the preschool requires enhanced DBS checks alongside paediatric first-aid, food-safety and safeguarding training. A designated safeguarding lead role and SENCo role give those responsibilities an identifiable place in the team structure.

Food has a practical role in independence. Children can help prepare fruit using children's knives, then choose a snack during the morning snack-bar period; choices include fruit, vegetables and bread-based foods, with milk or water, and dietary requirements and allergies are accommodated.

In January 2025, children poured drinks themselves and discussed healthier food choices and dental care. For the lunch extension, families supply a packed lunch and drink. Eating with other children and adults is part of that session, followed by an adult-led activity.

Sessions and Attendance

The preschool opens Monday to Friday during term time, from 9.15am to 12.45pm. The main morning session can be followed by an extended lunch session, with priority for the lunch extension given to children starting school in the next academic year. Extra lunch hours are charged at the usual hourly rate when they take attendance beyond a child's funded allowance.

A longer lunch/early-afternoon option finishes at 2.30pm for children ready to eat seated with a group at a table; the preschool does not use highchairs for this arrangement.

Applications use a completed form, which can be returned in person or through the preschool's outside letterbox. Enquiries can be made by telephone or email, with email the route for school-holiday enquiries. The site has a car park for collection and drop-off.

Funding and Paid Extras

Early Years Free Entitlement provides up to 15 hours a week for up to 38 weeks for children aged three and four, beginning in the term after their third birthday. Free Early Learning for Two Year olds funding is also accepted. Some families qualify for up to 30 funded hours from the term after their child turns nine months; the preschool's own intake remains children over two and below school age. Funded attendance follows its term-time operation.

Private payment covers children not yet eligible for funding and hours beyond an entitlement. Current prices come in the preschool's written quotation. Funded sessions carry an additional charge covering the daily snack, baby wipes, nappy sacks and enrichment such as gardening and boogie beats, an enrichment activity included in that charge; the charge is waived for children receiving FEET or EYPP. Lunch food and a drink come from home.

• Participation in group activities. In January 2025, younger children sometimes lost concentration during larger gatherings, and quieter or less confident children needed support that staff did not consistently recognise. At a visit, ask how group activities have been adapted and how staff bring hesitant children into the activity.
• Lunch readiness and timing. The longer option ends at 2.30pm and depends on a child being ready to eat at a shared table. The longer lunch timetable has been trialled on selected days. Confirm which days offer that finish before building a weekly childcare arrangement around it.
• Church and family involvement. Nativity costumes, occasional church services and parent participation are part of preschool life. Consider whether that combination matches the experience you want for your child and family.
• Food and funded extras. Packed lunch comes from home, while funded-session extras include snacks and specified consumables, with a waiver for FEET or EYPP recipients. For a child with allergies, confirm how snack preparation and packed lunches are managed in current practice.

Little Fishes suits families seeking a term-time morning preschool or a morning followed by lunch and early-afternoon care. Its appeal is tangible: a hall-and-garden day, children growing food, planned key-group activities and targeted Bubbles Groups support. Parents can also take an active part in the committee-run, not-for-profit setting.

The January 2025 findings give reasons for confidence alongside a precise caution about attention and participation in group activities. For a younger or quieter child, that is the point to explore most closely.