I have just been writing my section for the newsletters for The Marina and Lincoln College nurseries and was really pleased to see that each of the Managers had asked their pre-school French teacher to write a paragraph about what they did within the nurseries. We have had visiting French teachers at many of the nurseries for several years now and have found that it has been a really successful activity. Unfortunately, at some of our locations we have been unable to find local teachers willing to come into the nurseries but it is something we are always on the look out for. I am most familiar with one of the companies whom we use, La Jolie Ronde, as both my children attended the classes and are still singing some of the songs, 5 years on!

The concept of introducing new languages to young children is great fun, as they accept the different vocabulary without question and most pick up the basics very quickly. We do not do any written work with the pre-schoolers, so it is all about what they hear and what they can repeat, with a lot of emphasis on songs and rhymes. We try and carry this through into other parts of the nursery day, so other opportunities for counting may be in French rather than English. It also allows staff to plan complementary activities, such as a French meal, or setting up the home corner as a French restaurant.

At the moment our language teaching is limited to the pre-school age group, starting with 3 year olds, but we are also researching baby signing.  There have been many different programmes developed over recent years and I know that some of our parents use signing at home. Is this something that you would consider to be a real benefit at nursery, or are there any initiatives that you would see as being more useful? It is always useful to hear your thoughts on what you would like to see.

After a glorious weekend of sunshine it is always hard to get back to the grindstone on Monday morning, but I am just reading through my notes from a meeting I attended on Friday. We were discussing policy issues that would affect childcare providers in the current economic climate and a recent survey was quoted which stated that 52% of day nurseries were currently making a loss. Fairly scary statistics, given that we are in a long-running debate about how Local Authorities use the Nursery Education Funding that is available for 3 and 4 year olds. One of the difficulties is that the system is so complex that very few parents using nurseries or childminders actually understand how the funding is applied. The Prime Minister announced last week that the funding would be rolled out to 2 year olds within the course of this Parliament, but we do not have any more detail than this at the present moment.

In principle, I welcome this extension of funding, as it allows even more people access to early years education and helps parents cope better with the financial burden of childcare. I’m a working Mum and know just what a large chunk of income can go on childcare. However, the Government continues to ignore the fact that the amount allocated by Local Authorities does not actually cover the cost of the session that is provided, so in practice, the private sector is subsidising Government policy and it is no surprise that so many voluntary pre-schools and charitable pre-schools are struggling to make ends meet. A lot of discussions and lobbying is going on, but as it stands at the moment, many of us are nervous about how we will manage to offer yet more loss-making Nursery Education Funded sessions. Let’s hope the real value of good quality childcare becomes a higher priority as the parties start thinking about their manifestos for the next election.

Back at nursery level, congratulations to our Filkins nursery for achieving a ‘GOOD’ scoring in their recent OFSTED report, which should be available on the OFSTED website any day (www.ofsted.gov.uk). We will all be making the most of this lovely sunshine for as long as it lasts, I feel a few conker collecting walks coming on! Enjoy your week……………………..

Welcome to the very first post on The Old Station Nursery blog!  Over the last few months we have been looking at new ways of communicating with parents who use our nurseries and also with our staff team, who now number well over 200.  As a relative newcomer to blogging, I hope that this will provide you with some up to date information and a feel for what is going on around the company.

I am sure you will use the opportunity to let me know what you think about some of the topics covered and I look forward to being able to hear your views.  How our children are cared for is obviously a subject very close to all our hearts and we genuinely want to do this to the best of our ability and to hear all the suggestions that you may have.

It is a really exciting time to be involved in childcare, as we have just launched the new Government framework which all nurseries have to work to, the Early Years Foundation Stage. Much has been written in the media about this ‘curriculum for babies’, but in reality most of the nursery sector seems to welcome the framework and certainly within the company we are getting on with embedding it with as little disruption as possible. I’m lucky enough to sit on the Government’s Early Years Stakeholder Group and it was fascinating at our meeting last week to hear some research from both Oxford and London University about research findings around how children learn and the influence of day care and home environments on that learning.  The key messages seem to be that firstly, the biggest single factor in determining a child’s performance at the end of Key Stage 2 at school is his or her home environment. No real surprsie there, I guess. Secondly, the biggest factor within childcare settings is the quality of interactions with the staff; again, not rocket science, but something that we are looking at very closely and trying to develop as much as possible.

It’s been a busy week around all the nurseries and we were delighted to welcome Ed Vaizey, our local MP to Faringdon, to visit the nursery on Friday. It is just over a year since we were flooded there and it has certainly been a long, slow drying out process.  The sandbags are still piled up in a corner, just in case, but we all have our fingers crossed it was just a one off…….

That’s it for now, but I hope you will find this a good way of keeping up to date and we will have news from around the company, from the sector as a whole and any other items of interest that are taking place. For now, those of you in Lincoln, don’t forget we are sponsoring a charity fashion show on Monday 13th October at the Drill Hall - do come along and see what well-dressed parents are wearing this Autumn!

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