Parent News

Dear Parents and Carer,

 

We would like to like to thank those parents who attended Burn’s night; we hope you had an enjoyable evening.

Policies

Please find attached our behaviour management policy.

Snails

The focus in the snails this week is garden activities. The children will have the opportunity to explore the garden by using the walkers, exploring with musical instruments, reading stories on the soft mat and exploring shape sorters. The children will also be able to explore cornflour play, looking through and holding onto books, exploring the ICT toys by pushing buttons and closing flaps. The children will also take part in a creative activity with paint and sponges and trying to find the balls whilst playing with the dinosaur run.  The story of the week this week is ‘touch and feel’ story books.

Planned activities within the Snails surround each child’s current interest in conjunction with supporting and extending their development.  To find out what activities are planned for your child for this week, please see your child’s keyworker who will be happy to take you through the planning.

Amy – Day off Monday

 

Caterpillars

This week the Caterpillars team will be supporting new children to explore books and the book area positively. Activities this week will include chalking, sponge painting, rhyme time, gluing and sticking, pop up toys, pull along toys, insert puzzles and exploring the building blocks. The children will also get to experience soft play and cornflour play. Outdoor activities include playing on the see-saws and exploring the duplo. The book of the week is ‘touch, feel books’ and ‘soft and hard picture books’.

 Planned activities within the Caterpillars surround each child’s current interest in conjunction with supporting and extending their development.  To find out what activities are planned for your child for this week, please see your child’s keyworker who will be happy to take you through the planning.

Days off       

Jamie – Friday

Alisha – Monday

 

 

Ladybirds

The current interest in the Ladybirds this week is gross motor skills. The children will have the opportunity to explore heuristic play, chalking on the pavement, wellie boot painting, singing songs with puppets, dancing to music and songs they enjoy, table painting, water play with jugs, exploring the tents and tunnels and soft play. Outdoor activities include pushchairs and babies, bikes and cars, building towers with big blocks, parachute and circle time songs and playing with the train track. The story of the week is ‘doing the animal bop’.

Planned activities within the ladybirds surround each child’s current interest in conjunction with supporting and extending their development.  To find out what activities are planned for your child for this week, please see your child’s keyworker who will be happy to take you through the planning.

Days off  

Abi – Friday, training on Tuesday

Naomi – Thursday

Maria – Annual leave Monday

 

 

 

Bumblebees

This week the children will be focusing on creative activities, reading stories and singing their favourite songs. Messy activities this week include painting with dinosaurs, ice play with food colouring, cornflour play (what marks can we make); floor painting, table painting and water play with bubbles and food colouring. Activities this week in the construction area include building a train track and using small blocks to create buildings around the track, mark making with cars and different coloured paints, exploring the sand with the cars, creating marks and tracks from the wheels, connect together the interstars, make a house for the happy land people using duplo, sorting items i.e. bottles, lids, Lego. Also building towers with blocks and using the duplo boards to create patterns using paper and crayons. Mathematical activities this week include measuring height of objects with duplo, the ‘what’s missing...’ game, whereby a member of staff will show the children items and then the items will be hidden under and blanket and an item will be taken away, the children then need to guess what item has been removed. During circle time when we take the register children will be asked to count their friends to see how many children we have. Another mathematical activity we will be carrying out is counting and recognising the colours of our compare bears and recognising numbers from 1-5. Literacy activities this week include reading the story of the week, which is ‘The very noisy house’. The children enjoyed this last week, so the practitioners thought to continue this book. Painting pictures of letters that appear in our name, singing the ABC song as the children are very into this as well and create an alphabet line by colouring in, gluing and sticking on the letters. In the role play area this week the children will be pretending to be firefighters by dressing up and using role play equipment, making letters and cards to go into our ‘post bag’ which will then be put into a ‘post box’ further in the week., the children will pretend to go shopping with their baskets and collect food, the children will then have to pay at the till once they have finished shopping. A cooking activity will also be taking place this week; the children will be making Selkirk Bannock (fruit cake).

Planned activities within the Bumblebees surround each child’s current interest in conjunction with supporting and extending their development.  To find out what activities are planned for your child for this week, please see your child’s keyworker who will be happy to take you through the planning which is now displayed on the large notice board outside the Bumblebees room.

 

Days off     

Jani – Annual leave Thursday, Day off Friday

Jenni – Office based Monday, Day off Wednesday

Hannah – Training on Friday

 

Butterflies     

This week the butterflies will be focusing on vegetables, fruits and nuts and growing vegetables and fruits. The activities will include drawing a plan showing a layout of the new vegetable plot, discussing what grows above and below the ground, grow plants from pots, potato printing to prepare for our wall display. On Friday the practitioners will be asking parents to bring in a piece of their child’s favourite fruit so this can be discussed the following week. Activities this week also include, writing our own names, looking around the room and noticing different shapes, playing with the small world farm and garden, exploring mathematical puzzles and games, matching numeral with quantity, recognising similarities and differences between us and completing a simple computer programme. Outdoor activities include, movement like growing vegetables, water play in the garden, playing running games, having bike races, using the climbing frames and chalk drawing. The children will be focusing on the letter of the week, which is, ‘F’ and the number of the week, which is number 12.

Planned activities within the Butterflies surround each child’s current interest in conjunction with supporting and extending their development.  To find out what activities are planned for your child for this week, please see your child’s keyworker who will be happy to take you through the planning.

 

Days off   

Stani – Training on Thursday, Day off Friday                                   

Tara – Tuesday, annual leave Friday

Juan – Wednesday

Lee – Wednesday Forest School all day and out on Thursday

Jade - Monday

 

Michelle is day off Monday.

 

Behaviour Management policy

 

Aim of policy

 

To clearly show how we manage behaviour of the children in our care. This policy aims to meet the requirements of OFSTED, Every Child Matters (2003) Early Years Foundation Stage (2012) and the Childcare Act 2006 with regard to behaviour management.  It will promote, encourage, reinforce and reward positive behaviour, enabling children to develop a sense of appropriate behaviour and a positive self-image.

 

Points to consider

 

Each child is different and will respond to different methods of behaviour management. The child’s key person can support other practitioners in managing behaviour by giving them information about the child.

 

Castle Daycare and Preschool aims to achieve this by:

• Never physically punishing a child. 

• Having a consistent approach to behaviour management and develop effective strategies using positive methods appropriate to the individual child.
• Promoting good behaviour at all times through praise and positive reinforcement.
• Practitioner’s role modelling good behaviour and language.
• Ensuing that all staff, students and anyone else working with the children is aware of how good behaviour is promoted and negative behaviour is addressed.
• Helping the children to understand the consequences of negative behaviour.
• Helping children to challenge bullying, harassment and name calling.
• Encouraging the children to be responsible through activities such as tidying up and creating their own rules.
• Reassuring children that they are valued even if their behaviour is sometimes unacceptable.
• Providing interesting, stimulating and fun activities, children who are not engaged in activities can become bored and misbehave.
• Providing adequate care routines. Children who are hungry or tired can misbehave.

 

Inappropriate behaviour almost invariably occurs when a child’s fundamental needs are frustrated.  The staff should always consider what the child’s needs are and how they can best be met in the Nursery.

Nursery staff will act as appropriate role models and should encourage the development of a positive self-image in the child. 

In order to function acceptably, children need to feel valued and accepted in a group – to feel secure with the adults caring for them and with the routine of the nursery.

Our staff will work with the children to agree acceptable boundaries.  Young children are still very egocentric and much of what society deems desirable, e.g. politeness, honesty, consideration for others, will be recognised and understood through expert role modelling.

We need children to understand what is required of them and why.  Staff at our nurseries need to give consistent messages and guidelines for acceptable behaviour.

Positive methods are more effective than negative ones in shaping the behaviour of children.  Rewards and distractions are preferable to punishment.  Children need to know that despite their inappropriate behaviour we still ‘love’ them.  It is the behaviour we dislike, not the child.  Nursery staff should praise a child whenever they can.  They should give individual time and attention to the child.

 

Staff should encourage children to talk over a problem, anticipate and remove potential problems or re-direct them.  Staff should value the tangible contributions that the child offers, including drawings and pictures brought from home.  Each child should be given the opportunity to ‘shine’ at a particular activity or skill.

 

Children should know that staff like their family.  Staff should develop partnerships with parents and ensure that parents are fully informed about support and the policies and strategies used for managing unacceptable behaviour.

 

Nursery staff should be consistent in their treatment of children; there should be fairness in access to toys, etc.  The same treatment should apply for both the individual and the group.  The rewards given should be consistent – in praise for actions, favours and privileges.  Staff should remember to reward children when they are good.

 

The staff should be aware of making emotional moral judgements.  We believe if a child is labelled; there is a danger of negative expectation.

 

Account must be taken in each case of the age and stage of the child’s development and staff should modify their expectations in light of the child’s level of maturity and ability.  Goals should be specified precisely in language everyone, including the child, can understand.  They should be broken down into small steps, starting with what the child can be relied upon to achieve and building up slowly.

 

If sanctions are carried out, they should be appropriate – they should also be given at the time of the inappropriate behaviour, be relevant and fair.  Never issue a warning or condition that is unrealistic – be prepared to carry it through.

Methods of dealing with unacceptable behaviour

Distraction

To avoid potential unacceptable behaviour – divert the child’s attention.  Offer the child something more attractive and positive to do – if possible, let them ‘help’ you to do something.  This may be particularly useful with young children who do not understand verbal reasoning.

Individual attention

Physically removing the child from the situation can stop undesirable behaviour by giving the child time to stop and think away from the problem, object or situation.  If a child needs to be removed from a group activity, the time spent outside the group gives them a chance to see what they are missing.  Such time out should be brief but immediate.  The child should not be removed from the room unless this sanction has not worked. 

 

Reprimand initially should be a private affair between the member of staff and child.  In the nursery, staff members need to have established the meaning of talking to the child ‘in a stern voice’ – this is not shouting.

 

Staff should remember that there is a need to ‘build a warm bridge’ again as soon as possible – conflicts should never linger.

Removing the object

This can work in the same way as taking the child away but an alternative activity should be offered.

Physical restraint

This can help with tantrums where a child is in danger of hurting themselves.    If physical intervention is seen as appropriate, ensure that the intervention is achieved with minimum force and for minimum time.  (As per safeguarding and promoting children’s welfare as part of the statutory framework for The Early Years Foundation Stage). Any time physical restraint is used, an incident form must be completed.

 

Biting behaviour must be recorded in the Incident Book but staff should not disclose the name of the biter when talking to the parents of the bitten child. See the biting policy

 

In this setting the Behaviour Management officer is Jennifer Smyth

Any child presenting difficult behaviour on a regular basis should become the subject for close observation.  Staff should identify:

 

• The nature of the behaviour
• Factors or circumstances which trigger it
• Timing – when and for how long
• People involved
• How does it end

 

The observations need to be written and examined for identifiable patterns and then decisions made about future handling.  Such written observations can provide objective evidence in discussion with parents and other professionals.

 

An incident book should be kept in the nursery to record incidences of severe inappropriate behaviour, i.e. behaviour that causes injury to another child.

 

Staff should share their anxieties with others and remember that they are only human and may need time out too.  It is not a sign of personal failure to ask for help and advice; it is a sign of maturity, intelligence and understanding.

Staff should always take time to stand back from situations and observe.

 

Never physically punish a child.  A common sense guideline is that staff should only physically remove a child from a situation if they are at physical risk of endangering themselves or the safety of others.

 

SMACKING, BITING OR SHAKING OF CHILDREN IN THE NURSERY IS FORBIDDEN

 

Remember that corporal punishment (smacking, biting, and shaking) is illegal, as is depriving a child of food or drink or forcing a child to consume it. 

In addition, staff must not use practices that humiliate or frighten children such as poking fun, sarcasm, shouting, using derogatory language, verbal or physical threats or taunts.

Violence or abuse of a child by a staff member will result in instant suspension pending a full investigation which will lead to dismissal if proved to be valid.

Any programme of behaviour management needs to be continuously evaluated.

There are no hard and fast rules or answers to dealing with problem behaviour – what may be an answer for one child’s individual needs may not be suitable for another.