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With the EYFS looming large ahead, much of the current conversation is dedicated to it. Particularly with many childminders, who traditionally have been semi-detached from the Foundation Stage and are understandably nervous about how it will impact on them.
With that in mind, we've come up with an EYFS article specifically aimed at childminders. Hope you enjoy it - find it from the New Content section below
We're delighted to welcome Herefordshire, Wandsworth, and Bath and North East Somerset, to the local authority scheme and the FSF. Teachers, practitioners, and other providers from these areas can now register and subscribe free of charge (visit the LA index page to learn more).
Topics Support: Minibeasts
Minibeasts - the perfect theme for spring and summer!
Educational Pioneers: Loris Malaguzzi, 1920-1994
A brief history and summary of the theories and practical aspects of the Reggio Emilia approach.
Cheerful or Cheerless Childminding in the face of EYFS Challenges?
Advice on how childminders can tackle the EYFS as it fast approaches. Don't worry, be happy!
Our usual conversation selection, which includes a poll this month - worksheets are a regular discussion point so it's interesting to see the results come in:
Woodwork
"...I've done a search and found some posts about using wood in the nursery, but I need to know, what wood is best to use, it obviously needs to be soft, what tools are best, where the best resources for small hands can be bought without being 'child sized' specifically and basically any tips about things you've tried and would/wouldnt do again...."
Worksheets poll
"... My dissertation for my BA is about worksheets and their use with pre-school settings. I wonder if you would be prepared to help generate some statistics about the numbers of settings who use worksheets? At this stage I don't need to know what your feelings are about whether worksheets should or shouldn't be used in pre-school - just whether or not your setting uses them!!..."
Strategies for helping child cope with feelings of anger/frustration
"... Had a child today who was very angry unhappy about an incident and tried to take his frustration out on other children but luckily staff intervened, however succeeded with staff, hitting/kicking staff, throwing toys at them for some minutes, even after gently removing to a quiet area away from an audience (still with two members of staff). Usually, we would sit with the child until they had calmed down sufficiently to talk about what happened but he was having none of that today. Doesn't happen that often.
How would do you deal with this situation, should it happen again?..."
How much committee involvement?
"... We are a committee run pre-school. I just wondered how much imput your committee have in the everyday running of the pre-school. Especially with the staff, mine seem to be disciplining staff and monitoring them, for example i spoke to a member of staff about her record keeping, committee have now taken to checking her record keeping every week to check she is doing it, i do feel they are going over my head or am i just being too emotional. They have also asked staff to come to them with any problems etc. I just wondered how much involvement your committe have and where you draw the line..."
Sessional to full day care?
"...We want to remain sessional pre school, but feel that to implement the increase to 15hrs flexibly we would have to change to full day care (we definately don't 'do babies/toddlers')- ages would be 2.5 years - 4+ yrs. Looking into allsorts of possibilities (including relocation)at the moment, we are in rented hall (not ideal, by a long way!)
Adavantages vs disadvantages of changing our registration from sessional to full day care? Can you help?..."
Planting a miniature garden
"...I was just wondering if anyone knew what kind of plants would work well in a minature garden? I thought about Rosemary, thyme and viola's, any more ideas please? ..."
"... I did a staff meeting last week and we asked each member of staff to write a compliment about each of the other staff. this compliment had to relate to them and work, i.e Claire is commitetd to her job, or Jo has a lovely way with the children, this is shown in her doing ...
The staff got the gist, we all had fifteen minutes to write the compliments, (13 compliments to write) and wrote them away from others. we then re-grouped to read our compliments back.... now there was two 'rules' firstly we had to attempt to make eye contact to the person we were giving the compliment to, and secondly we were not to laugh or talk as the compliment was being given.
We had some lovely compliments come back, and it was a very emotional time, several staff cried as they received their compliments, it was very heartwarming and great for team building..."
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