February at Atworth....

Meet our Baby room team….

We thought each month we would focus on one team in our nursery and tell you all about them. We know it is tricky not being able to come on to site and not being able to really see the whole room team so we thought this might help!

Harriet - Head of Baby room

This is Harriet. She started at Atworth many moons ago in 2014. She started her Nursery Apprentice here and very quickly received her Level 3 qualification. She has been the Head of our baby room for over 4 years now and she knows the nursery inside and out! During her Apprenticeship she worked in every room and really homed in on her skills in the baby room.

With having 6 babies in the baby room she knows every child inside and out. Her strengths are that she has such amazing relationships with the parents. You can usually find her chatting to a parent on the doorstep about what they have been up to, how their child has been and how their family are. She really puts the children and families at the heart of everything that she does. She will tailor the room routine based on the children’s sleeping needs, their feeding needs and what they are enjoying that day.

The children absolutely love seeing Harriet and always toddle in to her or hold their arms out for a cuddle when they see her. She will always tailor her day on the child, their interests and needs. She is a great team leader and works extremely closely with her team. She has worked extremely hard on making her baby room more curious and supported the team to achieve the ‘Curiosity approach Accreditation’. Her baby room is homely, curious and all the babies run in to see what exciting bits and bobs are available for them to explore.

Her room is trialling In The Moment Planning and they have hit the ground running! They are tailoring their day on the babies interests and developing teaching cycles from these. Ask Harriet if you would like to know more!

Sarah - Advanced Baby Room Practitioner

Sarah has worked at our larger Weston Nursery in Bath in their baby room prior to going on maternity leave. She returned from Maternity leave and transferred to our Atworth nursery where, like Harriet, has worked in many of the rooms. She has really homed in her skills in our baby room and has recently been promoted to Advanced baby room practitioner. Sarah has a Level 3 qualification in Early Years Childcare.

Sarah can usually be heard singing to the babies so keep your ears open for those summer days when you will hear her beautiful singing voice coming out of the baby room! She has two children herself so really makes all families feel at ease and can provide honest, valuable advice to families from sleeping, toilet training to feeding. So please do ask away or even ask to hear her beautiful singing voice!

She is bubbly, happy and always one to sing, dance and get messy with the children! Again Sarah is a professional at building those key relationships with the children and families, not only her key children, but of all the children in the baby room.

Sarah is also our Well-being Champion for our Atworth team. She leads well-being at our site and provides ideas to support the teams well-being. She is a friendly, open ear for our team. Working long hours and working with children can be stressful and it’s Sarah’s job to be aware of this and to target our teams well-being! Most recently she has brought in weekly ‘Random acts of kindness’ to our team where they can choose a member of staff who is most deserving of a little uplift during the week which can be anything from covering them to go home five minutes early or bringing in their favourite biscuits. She is also busy working on our ‘Time to talk’ week and our ‘Hugs in a mug’ for our teams!

Jenna - Nursery Nurse

Jenna joined us in 2015 at Atworth after moving from a very busy baby room role in Bristol. She has always worked with children and in 2004 she completed her Level 5 Higher National Diploma in Early Childhood Studies. She sure knows her stuff!

Since starting she was always based in our toddler room where she was a strong and calm member of our team across our two toddler rooms. She then went on Maternity leave to return to be based in our baby room where she has absolutely flourished!

Jenna is a mother to two young girls, of which you may hear or see her youngest in our pre-school room! Jenna is one of those people who behind the scenes are juggling multiple spinning plates but on the outside is calm and extremely happy! Maybe one day she might become a juggler in the circus, you never know!

She is a warm, calming person who is always smiley and has a happy demeanour. You will always find her with a smile on her face. Again, the babies absolutely love seeing her in the mornings, as do the families, and she really makes every child feel special, cared for and comfortable in her care. She is working hard at the moment with the baby room team to be our trial room for In the Moment Planning.

Being a mother, Jenna knows the ins and outs of bringing up a little baby. She is so knowledgeable and can really relate to parents struggles with sleeping, feeding or teething. Feel free to use her as a source of knowledge and throw your questions at her!

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Observations on ParentZone…

Why do we observe the children?

We observe the children to learn about the child’s interests, to observe where the child is with their learning and how they are learning. We observe to assess and plan so that we can support the child’s next step of learning.

Why are we changing our observations?

We feel that we can improve our observations to really highlight the learning of the children during the day at nursery. We want to really push the adult’s role of observing their play, assessing what they see, planning how to respond and then to teach next steps immediately in a way that is unique to that child in that particular moment.

How are they changing?

We used to pop on a picture of an activity that the child has engaged with and link it to the EYFS but this has now changed.

Now we are observing teaching cycles. Teaching cycles happen 100 or plus times per day. These can either be exceptional learning moments or really small moments of learning.

 A teaching cycle consists of; an Observation, Teaching Moment and the Outcome.

The observation is what the child is doing, what the child did or said.

A teaching moment is how we supported the child, did we explain/model anything, did we change the situation to support them further? What the adult did or said.

The outcome is what the child managed to achieve with the adult input. What did they achieve or learn.

 We will also link this to a Characteristic of effective learning – how are the children learning. Also, we will link this to an area of their development.

We will complete at least one of these observations per week per key child. Your child may have more if they are our focus child – this will be explained when your child is this! Don’t worry, we will still be popping ‘snapshots’ of your children; some lovely pictures, videos of your children on ParentZone too!

You will always see your child’s observations detailing these three items above. Here are a few examples below:

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Observation:

Jenna wanted a turn on the rope.

Teachable moment / next step:

I modelled the language and encouraged Jenna to repeat the phrase ‘Can I have a turn please?’

Outcome:

Jenna does this and the pair then took turns independently.

Characteristic of Effective Learning – Being willing to have a go
Area of Learning – Personal, Social & Emotional Development: Making Relationships

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Observation:

Ethan wants to turn on the tap but can’t reach.

Teachable moment / next step:

I showed him the step and suggested he could use that.

Outcome:

Ethan pulls the step over, climbs up and turns on the tap.

Characteristic of Effective Learning – Being willing to have a go

Area of Learning – Physical Development: Moving and Handling

How can we help as parents? 

Have a look at what we have been observing at the nursery. These are things that your child is learning with our teaching and adult input. Maybe you might like to support your child with these at home. It could be anyone of a multitude of areas such as, verbalising their needs, scissor skills, confidence in standing, listening to instructions. The lists go on and on!

None the less, we would love for families to get involved with their observations. If you see any fantastic learning moment at home, please do pop them on to ParentZone. 

Let us know what they did:

How did you support them with this:

What they learnt:

If not, just pop on a picture and we would love to support you to see how you have supported your child’s learning!

If you need any help logging in to ParentZone please do just ask and we will be happy to take a look.

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Can you give some advice to prospective families?

Since the Lockdown last year, children have been having such different experiences to what they would usually have. Prior to COVID, families would integrate, meet up, newborns would meet the extended family and we are finding that this isn’t happening. It’s always going to be daunting leaving your child in a setting, with new people and the amount of trust that you have to have in the practitioners and team taking care of your little one is immense. We have had a lot of nervous prospective families who have found that this has been extremely heightened due to lockdown. Can you provide them with any help or would you like to let us know your experiences? Please do send them via email to atworth@snapdragonsnursery.com

As always, we would love to hear about any staff that have gone above and beyond so please do let us know. You can nominate your Snappy Superstar on our website! See link below.

Snappies Superstar — Snapdragons Nursery

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What’s been happening at Atworth in February?

Our Story of the month has been ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and we have been celebrating Chinese New year and valentines day! Come and have a look at how the children have been exploring the story and events this month!

We always celebrate all festivals and events that each and every one of the Atworth children may be involved in but we also push their comfort zones and get them to understand other festivals and events around the world. This really supports their British Values and encourages them to be respectful and accepting of others and their beliefs. Have a look below at what we have been doing to celebrate Chinese New Year.

We have made playdough pancakes, real pancakes, made breakfast menus for goldilocks and made puppets from the stories. We even tried different foods such as bamboo shoots, prawn crackers, water chestnuts and even lychee juice and green tea!

As always, pop on to ParentZone to have a look at what the children have been up to. Please do upload some pictures of what you have been up to at home!

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Share the Love

We had so much fun making our ‘Share the Love’ video and we were blown away with how natural it was for all the children to show kindness, love and happiness :) We hope you enjoy watching it too!

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Training and support for Spurgeons; our linked Children’s centre

Please do have a look at the attached courses and information about support, advice and courses that Spurgeons are offering to parents and carers of children. If you would like any advice or have any questions about these, please do ask.

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Dates to remember:

St David’s Day - 1st March,

World Book day - 4th March,

Mothers day - 14th March,

Spring begins - 20th March,

World Water day - 22nd March,

Holi Festival - 28th March (watch this space for an event!).