All parents should by now be receiving their weekly What’s Happening Email Bulletin.

This bulletin has proved to be a great success in terms of communication and this was reflected recently in our parental questionnaires.  (*Feedback from the questionnaires is currently being collated – we will share the outcome of this and alert you to any ‘action points’ the family centre need to address.)

The weekly parent email not only informs parents and carers of the events for the forthcoming week, but also gives parents an idea on some ‘workouts’ and/or ‘talking tips’ to carry out at home.

The workouts and talking tips stem from staff’s knowledge of child development and we think about each of the workouts and talking tips in terms of how we can best support children’s continued development in all areas of the curriculum.

 Even the simplest colouring in task (last week’s workout!) is helping support child development in a number of areas for example:

 Fine  motor development

• hand – eye coordination
• hand skills
• pencil grasp
• control of pencil/implement
• securing preferred hand
• development of pencil control leads to better control when forming letters/numbers
• awareness of matching, naming, sorting colours
• perseverance in task – even when tricky i.e. staying in the lines
• Maintaining attention skills
• Increased focus
• Completion of task through to end
• Following instructions
• Increasing confidence on completion and handing in to staff member
• Celebrating success when praised after completion
• Sense of achievement at having work displayed on wall

 The list is endless……………

I wonder what next weeks workout will be!?