Hi everyone!
Nursery fun so far….
So far this year we have been busy settling in lots of new babies into our baby rooms! Our new baby room practitioners Tracy and Jenni have been a great addition to our wee team.
Research based practice
As a team we have been busy looking at the approaches we are taking with our children and our resources in the nursery. This has included carrying out a book audit in relation to ‘gender equal play’ guidelines. We have been reflecting on our own experiences of gender, play and toys. We found that lots of children’s story books have male central characters. We looked at our own resources and have updated some of the books in our 2-5s room.
We have been looking at the use of comfort toys in nursery and found that the overwhelming majority of research indicates that these are important for security and ease of transition. We will continue to encourage comfort toys and other items from home in our setting.
We also took time to discuss the development of sharing in our young children including the developmental norms around this.
What have our children been up to?
Our 2-5s have been spending lots of time outdoors exploring the garden. They have created a small pond in the back garden and have been enjoying jumping in it and using the water for different purposes. Following a number of children’s interests our dolls house has transformed into a dinosaur land. We are now looking at developing it into an ice cream shop. Our children have been showing a keen interest in music from various musicals and selling ice cream at their performances. This interest led to the development of a small stage. The children also continue to explore a number of sensory based interests including using gluk, hay, shredded paper, oats and sand in our tuff trays. Messy but lots of fun!
The children in the 2-5 room have been showing an interest in taking photographs on our nursery phone. These have been particularly interesting! To follow up on this interest we provided disposable cameras. We are currently waiting on the photographs being developed and to see what the children would like to do with them.
We have also started our intergenerational project with royal scot court. This runs every second Thursday from 10-10.45am.
Our 0-2s have been spending time getting to know our new staff and settling into our upstairs rooms. It has been really important to allow plenty of time for this and so we have had additional help in our upstairs rooms. We have added a number of new sensory experiences for our 0-2s including using water, shredded paper and sand in our tuff trays. Following many of our children’s developmental stage we brought the bridge upstairs to facilitate standing, cruising and walking. We also bought small walkers to help children grow in confidence whilst walking. We have taken our 0-2s outside into both the baby garden and the larger garden where possible and we have been getting out and about into the community.
Nursery self-assessment and improvement
We have recently developed a ‘settling in’ care pathway. This has been following feedback from parents about how they feel their settling in process went and how it could be improved upon.
We are also currently carrying out a food audit by looking at the meals the children are having and which meals they like better. Where possible we are asking the children to give verbal feedback on the food. As we are looking to hire a chef this will help inform the menu that we are able to create.
Music classes
We are exploring the possibility of starting up music classes within the nursery. These will be led by an independent music teacher and based around the children’s interests. If this is something that would be of interest to you please let me know.
Room names
You will notice that we are using 0-2s and 2-5s as our temporary room names. If parents or children have any ideas of names for our rooms please let us know. I will pop some paper at the front door for any ideas!
Staff training
We recently had a staff training evening on ‘risky play’ and using the fire pit. This was facilitated by Tiptoes nursery in Falkirk whom we have been working with since before we opened to share ideas and good practice. The team are keen to get going with using the fire pit to prepare snack.
The team are also heading off to the Playworks conference in May which looks to be a fun and informative day.
I have also been taking part in Starcatchers training in Glasgow. This has been 4 days of training on visual arts, puppetry, creative movement and music. I’m looking forward to implementing some of the many ideas from this training with the children.
Dates for your diary!
Resilience screening: We will be showing the film ‘resilience’ on Wednesday 15th May at 6.30pm. This is a film about adverse childhood experiences and how they impact on long term health. It is a fascinating watch. Please ask about tickets for this screening which will be free for our parents!
Spring open day: we will be having an open day for new families should you know of anyone who would like to have a look around. This will be on Saturday 25th May 1-4pm
New staff
You will have noticed that we have new faces in the nursery. We are happy to introduce Amy into our 0-2s room. Amy Whitter originally joined us through an agency but quickly settled into working with us and so we offered her a full-time position.
We will also be introducing Anna McGregor to our 2-5s room. Anna has a range of experience working with children and in particular children with additional support needs. Having Anna join us will allow us to take on more children in our 2-5s room which we are really looking forward to.
We also have a number of bank staff joining us. The majority of our bank staff are local parents who have been keen to get involved in early childcare and education or are qualified practitioners. Our bank staff will help with covering lunch breaks, holidays and sick leave. The children will have time to get to know them as they cover lunch breaks prior to starting any holiday or sick leave cover.
Thanks for reading!
Katie
