1. Dawn Hendry, head teacher at Balgay Hill Nursery School, Dundee
We are trialling the greater involvement of children in all aspects of nursery life. They are helping to carry out audits of practice, e.g. sustainability planning, recording their own health and safety checks, ordering snack foods online and giving the head teacher their opinions about what she does well and what she can improve, to feed in to her professional work review. There is only one slight warning to go along with this: if you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question!
2. Vanessa Callan, director of High House Nursery, Stansted
We have created a parent occupation box on our registration form with an additional question, ‘Would you be happy to come in and share your skill and/or knowledge with the children?’ This has led to a visit from a policeman in his force’s shiny new riot van, as well as from doctors, dentists, dieticians, fire officers and chefs.
3. Samantha Attwater, director of nurseries for Aurora Academies Trust, East Sussex
Put bicarbonate of soda in vinegar, or Mentos in Coke, to create an erupting volcano. Our children really enjoyed creating a papier-mâché volcano first, and the experiment brought it to life.
For more information, go to: www.nurseryworld.co.uk/science-in-early-years
4. Rachel Cowie, EYP and Montessori teacher, in the process of setting up her own nursery, London
We’re going on a bear hunt! Using a piece of fabric, I sewed and glued grass and blue material for water, black mud-coated fabric for mud, corn flour, brown paint, twigs and acorns for the forest, and ice cubes and cotton wool for snow (pictured above, right). Children walked along it making the sound effects to the story and identifying each section, and I used open-ended questions to promote their language development, e.g. ‘What does it feel like being in a snowstorm?’ I then encouraged the parents to make their own resources to use with their children at home.
5. Joelle Lax, manager at Holcroft Community Nursery, LEYF, London
We run ‘Lunch with your key person’ events. The key person invites all their families to join in for a special lunch. Parents meet each other, share food tips and enjoy seeing their children explore the nursery environment. Parents are amazed to see how children are more adventurous to try new foods with their peers. The children also make the invitations. This helps with building secure attachments/positive relationships and has helped ‘fussy eaters’ and children who are finding settling in difficult.
6. Sara Williams, manager at Y Pelican, Cardiff
We are a Welsh eco nursery and find the best way to be sustainable is to keep everything. To come up with new ideas, put piles of recyclables on the table in a staff meeting and give them 10 minutes to make something. Ours covered a box in yoghurt pots and made a spaceship. You’ll need a big cupboard, though.
For more information, go to: www.eco-schools.org.uk
7. Mick Davies, programme manager at Surestart Palfrey, Walsall
Here’s a little gardening tip; these can be grown indoors: Take two daffodil bulbs, a fresh beetroot and 1 tbsp of oil. Then:
Scoop out the beetroot and place one bulb inside. Add the oil to the beetroot flesh that was scooped out and pack it around your daffodil bulb. Plant as normal.
Plant your other daffodil as normal.
When they bloom, you’ll have one yellow and one pink-tinted flower.
A policeman and his riot van visited children at High House Nursery, Stansted
8. Suzanne Charlesworth, nursery manager at Each Peach Childcare, Hove
We are inviting the parents of children who start school in September 2016 to create their own All About Me box, in order to promote key aspects in the EYFS. The children can put anything in the box they like – a photo of their family, a favourite toy – anything that means something to them that they can talk about with their peers. This will help to build their confidence and communication skills and give them the opportunity to express their personal, social and emotional skills.
9. Sarah Mackenzie, quality and training director at Childbase Partnership, nationwide
We use the Education Endowment Toolkit, which takes key topics such as literacy and weighs up the strength of current evidence, impact on learning and cost, to ensure that spending is concentrated on areas that will have the greatest impact. This has been an ideal tool for informing EYPP spending decisions and to support wider resource and training budget spends. We take this information into account alongside our nursery audits and cohort-tracking.
For more information, go to: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk
10. Jill McWilliams, manager at Kids@BT9, Belfast
All of our parents complete a ‘settling in review’. This gives the parent the opportunity to provide feedback (positive or negative) on the settling in for both the baby/child and themselves. This feedback informs self-reflection and any improvements that need to be made by the nursery. The same process is completed when a child transitions from room to room.
