Centre News – Page 13 – Colquhoun Park Early Years Centre

September 29, 2023June 26, 2024

CP NEWS – October Edition

We need to hold our hands up when we recognise we aren’t quite doing as well as we could, in order to ensure we do better!

Our Newsletter has been completely neglected over the past year and it would seem instead of sending out Newsletters periodically we have opted to partake in lots and lots of good old fashioned chatting to get what we have been up to out to our families – I think we may have got a little carried away with having our families back in centre and being able to have face to face conversations after they were taken away for so long!

Whilst these interactions are invaluable to us, we recognise that we don’t always get the opportunity to do this with everyone and there is still a need for an overview of centre news to be shared and easy to located when needed.

That is why we have opted for this option. At the end of each month an update will be added to our blog and circulated electronically to all of our families.(Hard copies can also be made available on request.)

We will aim to recap on the month past whilst informing our families on what to expect in the month ahead.

This will be over and above face to face, journals, twitter, email, drop in sessions and telephone contact and will not be instead of. We are hopeful that with different methods of communication we are able to engage all of our families in a way that best suits them, however we will monitor this closely as there is a fine line between good communication and overload of which we are aware!

What’s New…

There has been quite a bit of change since our last newsletter so we are hopeful that by the end of today’s read we will have created a bit of a round up of all the information you will have received in the moment during that past few months.

Babies

We said goodbye to both Shannon & Rebecca earlier this year, waving them off to enjoy the adventure that is Motherhood.

Rebecca welcomed her twins Ava & Carter into the world on the 29th of June.

Ava 6lbs 6oz & Carter 7lbs 2oz

Shannon welcomed wee Freddie Jon into the world on the 8th of August.

Freddie Jon 8lbs 4oz

Retirement

On the topic of babies, the lovely Anne Maria welcomed another beautiful Grandchild into the world, Henry. Anne Maria adores being Gran Marie to Izzy and Gia already, but now with baby Henry on the scene Anne Maria has decided to hang up her Depute shoes at Colquhoun Park EYC and focus on being Super Gran full time!

Anne Maria has been a massive part of our journey here at Colquhoun Park EYC, leading our team through some of the toughest challenges we have ever had to face, bringing us out the other end stronger and united in our efforts to make Colquhoun Park EYC the best it can be for our children, families and staff team.

We would all like to thank you for everything you have done and taught us over the years and wish you all the best in your new chapter.

New/Returning Staff

We welcomed back Kirsty from Maternity Leave in the Summer. Kirsty has came back Part-time working on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Erinn who had been working with us on supply for quite some time was successful in interview to become Kirsty’s other half. We are delighted as Erinn has now become a permanent fixture at Colquhoun working Thursday & Friday each week.

Caitlyn joined us from Argyll and Bute in August and has made a great addition to our team. Caitlyn is covering Rebecca’s maternity post.

Rachel joined our team last year as a support worker and loved CPEYC so much she was appointed after interview to take on Shannon’s maternity post.

To learn more about our staff team visit Meet our Staff section within our blog

Career Breaks

Lucy and Carol have taken a year out this year to spend some quality time with their loved ones. We hope this year provides you both with everything you hoped for and more.

Acting up

Since 2021 Kady has been part time Depute in centre, working Monday/Tuesday as Depute and Wednesday/Thursday/Friday as Senior. Since March this year Kady has been carrying out the role of Depute full time, in an aim to offer continuity to staff, children and families during a time of transition.

During this period Laura, who carried out the role of senior job share with Kady has backfilled the position Kady vacated. Therefore Laura is now carrying out the role of full time Senior Early Years Worker within Centre.

Curriculum

There have been changes made to our curriculum delivery and securing of children’s progress. Information has been sent out to all parents via letter and can also be accessed at Tracking and Securing Child Progress

Pencil in – Thursday 2nd of November 6pm – 8pm we are hoping to host our curriculum night in centre where we open up the doors to our children’s adults to come find out more about what we do and understand our WHY. – More information will be sent out in due course once date is confirmed.

Family Engagement Opportunities

The construction of our family learning calendar is underway. While waiting on this being finalised we held our first ever Bookbug session facilitated by Laura. This proved a big hit with our families and something we will be adding to our delivery.

We aim to share our 2023/2024 calendar with our families in the coming weeks. All families will be notified when this is released.

September 8, 2023

Bookbug Sessions

We are delighted to introduce Bookbug sessions to our Family Learning calendar this year!

Keep your eyes peeled for information on how to get yourself involved!

August 17, 2023

Tracking & Securing Children’s Progress

We are making changes to the way we document and secure our children’s progress.

Here is our WHY

Through observation and consultation with children/families and our staff team we have evaluated the time we spend writing up and documenting children’s learning and the time we get to physically be present, participate and scaffold learning experiences – we decided the balance was off!

We asked our children, to get a gauge of how much they took the lead on their learning and understood their learning. What are you learning about? When answering this question, most of the children spoke to us about the curricular learning throughout their environment and not their own personal journey.

We asked our parents what they thought about the observations that were put up for their children. Whilst all were complimentary about the detail that was put into each observation, the majority admitted they would by happy just with some photos to see what they had been up to – favouring twitter as our best form of communication.

What we have been doing

At present each staff member is given 2 hours off the floor per week to ensure planning and paperwork is up to date and that your child’s learning journey is documented. Given the number of staff in our team that means that each day there are 2 members of staff off the floor to allow for this. 4 hours in which children do not have that additional staff member each day.

We brought this to the staff team meeting at in-service and we searched for solutions. We discussed firstly from a staff member perspective their feeling towards the written workload. The consensus of the staff team was that with the demands of write up’s they were finding themselves struggling to settle into the moment as their minds would be preoccupied with all the other aspects of the job. As a staff team we are all in agreement this is not the service or provision we want to provide, we want to be present for the children, we want the freedom to follow their lead, we want to ensure quality provision with maximum interactions, and we want to do all this without compromising securing your children’s progress and development.

What we plan to do

Each staff member will be given 1 day every 6 weeks off the floor to evaluate their key children’s progress, planning for and setting challenge steps for moving forward. In between this time snapshot stories will be added with your child’s input to support their understanding of their learning journey. Staff will work hard to promote a sense of autonomy for your child in regard to their learning. Our journal systems will be used to document and track your child’s Health & Wellbeing, Literacy and Numeracy Progress throughout their time with us. Staff members will use their observations and knowledge of your child to support learning experiences and outcomes using their personals interests and vehicles for discovery.

Environment planning takes place alongside the children in the same way as before ensuring that children are exposed to and can explore cross curricular learning opportunities and experiences daily.

We intend to roll out our new way of working from next week. Week commencing 21^st August 2023.

2 staff members each week will be given their non-contact time, and this will be staggered to ensure we are able to closely monitor and evaluate this new way of working. You will begin to see staff members use snapshot stories more often as they start to map your child’s journey alongside them.

We hope in turn, that you will be able to see an increase in your child’s understanding and confidence in their knowledge of how to share this journey with you.

Trial period

As with everything it is important that we enter a trial period, critically evaluating the provision we provide to ensure we continue to get it right for our children and families. We are proposing that our initial trial period for this is up until December this year at which point, we will be reaching out for feedback. We will be particularly interested to get feedback from those parents who are returning this year and have only known our way of working up until now.

In the interim if anyone has any questions, feedback, or suggestions please do not hesitate in contacting us.

Thank you as always for your continued support.

Team Colquhoun x