Tadpoles Community Pre-School

Growing vegetables, watching caterpillars become butterflies and choosing between indoor and outdoor play give Tadpoles Community Pre-School a clear character. Its Nature Nook sits within the main garden, where children help with planting, watering and harvesting. This is a preschool with plenty of practical work for small hands, rather than a day built around sitting and listening.

On the Frogmore school campus in Camberley, Tadpoles is a committee-managed charity serving children aged 2 to 5, with 50 places in total. At its September 2025 inspection, Ofsted rated it Good and found safeguarding effective. The outdoor spaces, play-led curriculum and opportunities for parents to contribute to its management are the strongest reasons to consider it.

Learning and Activities

The EYFS guides learning, development and care here: children learn through play, with adult-led activities alongside opportunities to choose their own equipment and ideas. Tadpoles adapts its classroom resources to children's interests. A shop was bought after shop games became popular, giving children a setting for imaginative play that also brings counting, language and social interaction together.

Choice has a physical expression. The garden door stays open after registration so children can move between outdoor and indoor activities. Art materials, a sensory tub, dressing-up resources and supported playdough making feature in the daily routine.

Music and Movement and Up and Active are optional activities included in each session at no extra charge. Playball, a sports coaching programme children sign up for separately, uses an extra garden at the back of Tadpoles. Children remaining in their usual session retain their normal classroom and garden space, so the club does not displace their everyday play.

In September 2025, books and conversation were prominent in the day. Children discussed pictures, anticipated story developments and encountered vocabulary about textures, patterns and shapes during small-group play. Staff also had responsibility for reviewing different areas of learning. However, adults did not consistently develop children's thinking through their interactions, and quieter children had fewer opportunities than their more vocal peers to contribute. That teaching detail matters as much as the equipment.

Outdoor and Community Life

Nature Nook turns growing into something children can follow from start to finish. They water plants, pick produce and taste what they have grown, including strawberries, pumpkins and carrots. Annual caterpillars introduce life cycles, while nesting birds provide another opportunity to connect learning with the garden itself. Nature is part of the day, rather than only a topic discussed indoors.

Elsewhere, the mud pit supports digging, moving materials and imaginative construction. A larger sand pit was built in response to children's interest in sand play, and fundraising bought new bikes for the scooter park. These are different kinds of outdoor experience: investigating living things, experimenting with materials and practising movement.

During September 2025, children used tools to examine insects beneath logs, collaborated on obstacle courses and counted tomatoes from the allotment before eating them at snack time. Outdoor play brought practical skills and mathematical ideas together.

An annual end-of-year celebration takes place before the summer holidays, with activities varying each year. Parents can contribute through the charity's committee and fundraising meetings.

Relationships and Communication

Termly telephone appointments with a child's key person cover progress. Parents can arrange further conversations between appointments, giving concerns a route beyond the scheduled discussions.

Tapestry, the online learning journal, shares children's learning with parents and allows families to add photographs and videos from home. Tadpoles gives one staff member responsibility for using a tablet each day, keeping the rest of the team free to take part in children's activities. Photographs therefore complement interaction rather than setting its pace; a picture every day is not guaranteed.

In September 2025, settling included home visits to learn about children's routines and family life. Staff tailored the process to individual children and helped them practise sharing and taking turns. Small responsibilities also featured: children fetched tissues, worked on putting on coats and helped prepare produce for snacks. These were everyday opportunities to do more for themselves.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

At the September 2025 inspection, Ofsted found that children with SEND received effective support through early identification, advice from outside professionals and adaptations to learning, and that children made good progress from their starting points. The current arrangements include a SENCO team, which attends local SENCO meetings each term and considers changes to the setting or further training before a child starts.

For a child who needs sleep, the daily routine allows naps according to their needs, with parents supplying information about routines at home. Lunch is not rushed for children who need longer to eat. These practical arrangements recognise that children may need different rhythms even when they attend the same session.

The manager holds the designated safeguarding lead role, with cover arrangements for absences. Families have a clear role to contact if they have a concern.

Sessions and Attendance

Tadpoles is at c/o Frogmore Infant School, Green Lane, Camberley, Hampshire, GU17 0NY. It occupies the former children's centre building on the school campus, nearer the junior school. Being on that campus does not guarantee a Reception place at the school.

The morning session runs from 8.45am to 11.45am and the afternoon from 12.30pm to 3.30pm. Morning with lunch extends the morning booking to 12.30pm, while an all-day booking runs from 8.45am to 3.30pm. Early Club covers 8.15am to 8.45am, and Lunch Club runs from 11.45am to 12.30pm.

In September 2025, the setting operated Monday to Friday during term time. Applications now begin by emailing enquiries@tadpolescommunitypreschool.com for a booking form. A place and start date are confirmed only when the family receives a reply confirming both, so submitting a form is not itself confirmation.

Funding and Paid Extras

Funded childcare and privately paid sessions are both offered. Funding includes universal 15-hour provision for children aged 3 and 4, extended 30-hour provision, and support for eligible two-year-olds; eligible working-family funding is also accepted. The universal entitlement starts from the term after a child's third birthday, and the universal and eligible two-year-old offers are described over 38 weeks.

Fundable sessions are the morning and afternoon blocks, Monday to Friday. Breakfast and lunch club time is charged separately, so a continuous day and a day made entirely from funded sessions have different structures. Parents are responsible for keeping funding reconfirmations up to date. Current prices come in the nursery's written quotation; the fees and funding page explains the session structure.

Parents supply a packed lunch for Lunch Club; the separately charged breakfast club can include breakfast. Music and Movement and Up and Active are included in session fees, while Playball requires a separate sign-up.

Optional uniform includes a logo jumper or polo shirt; a box outside holds free second-hand uniform for reuse.

• Quieter children. September 2025 improvement priorities included giving less-confident children more chances to communicate in groups and making adult interactions more consistently productive. At a show-round, ask how staff now involve a child who rarely volunteers an answer.
• Funded sessions and club time. Funding applies to the morning and afternoon blocks, while breakfast and lunch clubs are charged separately. Families needing a continuous day should compare the complete attendance pattern in their written quotation, including who supplies lunch.
• School-campus setting. Tadpoles shares the Frogmore school site, but preschool attendance does not guarantee a Reception place. Keep the preschool decision and the school application separate.
• Practical care supplies. Nature Nook and free-flow garden access make outdoor play central to the day. Before joining, ask what clothing and personal-care consumables families should provide for their child's sessions.

Tadpoles suits families choosing morning or afternoon preschool sessions as well as those wanting an all-day booking, with optional club time around the main sessions. Nature Nook, the mud pit and the scooter park give its play-led offer substance, while key-person calls and Tapestry connect families with children's learning.

The balance is clear: there is plenty for children to investigate and do, but the September 2025 teaching priorities deserve attention, especially for a quieter child. For parents who value outdoor choice, practical independence and a role in a community charity, this is a preschool with a recognisable identity.