foundation stage, need help please from childcarers?

Question

im a nursery nurse working with preschoolers, ive just come back from maternity leave and surprise surprise its all changed. my boss has informed me we cant do structured planning. we do lots of child led things but i cant understand it its crazy, we have a rough term guide like Halloween and davaili but not a day to day or week planning of what activities to do or discussions so my children are just meant to know what davaili is are they? when the little town we live in is their world. we did "families" last term yet the children had no idea and we did nothing to support it except a family tree display the parents didn't know either one of my key parents wanted to know what topics we were doing so she could do things at home what could i tell her all i could say was at the moment we are doing a colour table. what was going on this cant be right surely. i was full of ideas for these 'topics' but couldn't implement them, its difficult assessing a child if you cant put an idea into their heads or providing items to trigger a reaction or response to sign of a stepping stone. and don't get me starting on assessments what is going on its a nightmare need help please from fellow nursery nurses

Answer 1

All I can say on the matter is that the people that sit in their offices at their desks and write these bleeding new planning formats every week (or thats how quickly it feels!) must never EVER have actually sat with children and spent any real time with them

Oh and by the way, we are'nt allowed to celebrate halloween as it 'promotes witchcraft'

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

We now plan daily; each worker is given a sheet at the start of the day which has a column for children's interests, and what the Childs next move could be for the child. Then from this we look and see what part of the EYFS this links too. For example last term many of the children were playing with dolls, brushing their hair, trying to dress them. This term we have decided to plan on being healthy, knowing our own needs etc. (for the children) so the home corner is set up as a Dr's surgery, and the water tray has water in it for the dolls to be bathed, including baby bath, towels tooth brushes etc the children are learning so much more this way as we are meeting their needs as they play with what they enjoy. Several others were putting bricks or other items at the bottom of the garage to stop the cars as they went down the ramp, so we introduced soft brick with the garage and asked the children if they could think of any ways to allow the car to continue once it was at the bottom. We also put out post-it note lets for the children to record how far the cars go we included tape measures, rulers. In the Dr's surgery we also have post it’s so they can write perceptions to help us to get better. We talked about not taking medication unless it comes from an adult and what could happen if you did take medication that you should not take. We talk about what is good to eat, what we like and don't like food wise.



Planning each day at first was a chore but now we have the hang of it so it quite easy, as long as the staff team complete the children’s interest forms. I am the manager so I say to the staff if you are not doing these how can we plan. I am also at the moment holding team meetings every two days and each member of staff is being asked what support they need from me then I encourage other members to support so that they know that they are not the only ones struggling. Now as a team we are all starting to get to grips with all these new and challenging changes.



If you would like to see a copy of the sheet we are using please let me know and I will forward one too you.



Good luck and hope your manager is supporting you through these very difficult changes. (hope this helps)

Answer 4

The idea of the new EYFS is that you do have a loose plan in place for your topic, but that once the initial seeds are planted you allow the children to shape the rest of the planning. For example, for Diwali you might start by explaining that it is a festival of light, and read the story of Rama and Sita. You would need to have a few activities in place to start with, ie. masks, clay divas, indian music, but whatever inspired the children would help you with the rest of the weeks planning. As for the assessing, it's really not as arduous as it appears. We have our key children and aim to make obs on post-it notes each day, all of which are added to the childrens scrap books at the end of the day/week. More detailed obs need only take 10-15m to do and we don't find them too tricky. It's really been a case of relaxing and playing with the children, giving them all the math/science/literacy/knowlenge and Understanding language as you go along......

The mistake that some people make is that you don't need to scaffold the children's learning......you do, but the planning needs to be ongoing rather than set in stone. We have found that the children may request the same activities for a few days....in which case that's fine, but we try to extend it a bit and see if that inspires them more ...or not.

I hope this helps a bit, maybe you should ask your supervisor if there is any EYFS training you could access, that'll help bring you back up to speed.....sounds like she might need it too if that's the view she has of the new curriculum!!!

Best of luck!!

Answer 5

Crazy huh....Switch your thinking from topics to skill levels. Painting a the easle-writing skills, social skills,, language skills.

Math---measuring sand, water, weighing fine motor skills stringing beads..Change activities each week but set them up to meet needs. If it help you."think" a theme in your head. (Fall) use that as your guideline.Put leaves in the sensory table, put brown,orange. yellow and purple pain on the easel. Then change it the next week. Does this help? Your boss should help you set up your classroom to meet these new guidelines. You will get used to the new set up. I have worked and been a director in both types of classrooms. The type you came back to, (developmental) is really easier once you get the hang of it.

Answer 6

If you wish to train your youngster how to see beginning little individual phrases, functioning around sentences and eventually full children's stories then Children Learning Reading from here https://tr.im/Wit6w do only that.

With Children Learning Reading your child's reading skills development as they sort out the fundamentals based instructions in stage one of many class, you (and your child) may well be excited to check out your child's new found reading skills and the very first benefit offered with the program allows you to accomplish exactly that, since it is just a eBook of reports which are ideally suited to the particular level your child will undoubtedly be at as they end the initial part of the course.

Children Learning Reading is the best plan to teach your child just how to read.

Answer 7

Hey,

For a simple, step-by-step program that can help your child learn to read visit this site: http://readingprogram.toptips.org



Learning to read at a young age is important for the development of the child. It helps them develop a better understand of their surroundings, allows them to gather information from printed materials, and provides them with a wonderful source of entertainment when they read stories and rhymes. Children develop at different rates, and some children will develop reading skills quicker than other children; however, what's important is that as the parent, you are keenly aware of your child's maturity and reading level to provide them with appropriate books and activities to help them improve.



As parents, you are the most important teacher for your children.



Also Watch this video of a 2 year old child reading http://readingprogram.toptips.org

Answer 8

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/eyfs Here is the link to the EYFS so you can read up on it and all the changes.



I think people are going a bit OTT and seeing it very black and white....there MUST be some structured programmes in place to fulfil the curriculum side of the setting however there should also be opportunities for free choice and interest based learning. Basically it should be a combination of the two.



Here is how my setting does it(not saying we're wrong or right for this):



End of term we evaluate the previous term and discuss any developments for the next term eg layout changes, different equipment etc.



Then we plan roughly the next term-we look at it in months and this is where structured planning comes in-we plan when we're having visits from police, fire etc...any festivals/celebrations, when we have birthdays etc. We then have mini-themes eg this term Sept-Oct has been leaves and changes but we didnt plan what we wanted children to learn or how we were going to do....this came later.



First two weeks spent playing alongside children and totally free play (only structure was routine-always having group time and the end of the session, circle time at beginning etc. We observed the children and watched what they were doing.



Then we had another meeting and we discussed what we saw and then planned what we can do the next week to further explore this eg: differnet equipment, a certain story, a small group display etc One example is in the 2nd week there was a lot of pretend cleaning going on around the room-children taking cleaning set and mopping around water, one child used a sock to wipe a table so we got more props for them such as aprons, empty cleaned out anti-bad spray bottle, blue cloths etc, we put cups, saucers wtc in the water tray for htem to wash up themselves etc.



On top of this we use the interest to support the mini-theme eg: children were using hands to paint in creative corner so we choose to make a tree using our handprints for leaves. We went on walk to look at leaves-took a few back to look at colour (this was group activity). We then set up an adult led activity in the messy corner with the colour paint matching the leaves. The chidlren helped make a tree display with handprints...we had a poster on door so parents knew what outr mini-theme was and our planning sheets are hung in the parents notice board area so they can see any particular interests that are happening.



Our planning sheet is split into 3 columns-adult planned based on child interest, adult planned for curriculum and child initiated (we have labelled boxes, free play areas etc)...then in rows it says the areas of the room-as week goes on we write in these boxes so OFSTED can see how we combine adult led structure in with child's free choice and interest based learning.



As we have a mixed age group and we have some older ones who are getting ready for Primary School we have a letter table...each week we choose a letter to focus on and children are encouraged to bring in a toy or object for that table. We follow the Jolly Phonics method for this and children can come listen to Jolly Phonics stories and rhymes and children who are in the development matters boxes for literacy will be asked if they want to join in a planned activity based on literacy and letter sounds.



The whole reason they scrapped termly topics was because children show more progress when the learning isbased around them as individuals and their own interest. By planing a main theme for them you are not neccessarily catering for this individualism and the ever changing interests children have.



PS: We spend lots of time with the children-the ENTIRE session is with the children-planning takes place OUTSIDE the childrens hours so session ends at 11.30 and we have meeting at 12.30 (after we've hadl unch) so we can relax and talk things through. The planning sheets arent difficult to do once you get used to them...as for notes we make we have stickers around the room and we all carry a pen so we jot it down and then they get stuck in kids books or diaries so that doesnt take long either.



WE're allowed to celebrate Halloween because its illegal to discriminate between religions-also we are very careful what we talk about and how we address ALL celebrations after all its not our place to tell a child what belief is right or wrong.