With all the promotion of healthy eating, generally in our early yearsworld we understand the concept of 'five a day'. However, I feel we needto look closely at how we present food, make meals times a positiveexperience and create key learning opportunities for young children.
When carrying out consultancy visits I have been in many outstandingsettings. For some reason, as soon as it is meal time the practice goesdown to inadequate. I have often commented that if I were a child Iwould walk out without paying for the meal! On some occasions, whenobserving meal times, the 'Oliver Twist' scene, 'Please, sir can I havesome more', springs to mind.
On the other hand, I have been in some settings where meal times areseen as an integral part of learning. These settings have consideredchildren's individual needs and ensure that staff always eat with thechildren. I often comment that if the food is nutritious enough for thechildren, then it is equally nutritious for the staff, so no excuseslike 'but I'm on a diet'.
Careful thought needs to go into the setting up of the meal time - forexample, whether to use a table or floor, table cloths, flowers or realcrockery. Children should be encouraged to serve themselves and beinvolved with the preparation. During the meal, staff should not begetting up every five minutes because there isn't enough crockery on thetable. And staff should ask open-ended questions about the food.
Meal times should also be led by the children's needs - not rushedbecause the cook is going off duty and everything must be washed up. Apositive meal time should, in theory and practice, draw out the sixareas of learning.
- Laura Henry, managing director of Childcare Consultancy and UKRepresentative for the World Forum on Early Care and Education
Our letter of the week wins 30 worth of books
UNFAIR TO PVI SECTOR
So, Michael Gove has asked Christine Gilbert to ditch the SelfEvaluation Form for the maintained sector, stating that this is thefirst step in a series of changes to school inspection aimed at removing'central prescription' and trusting teachers to get on with theirjobs.
But what about pre-schools that are not attached to maintained schools?Are they not to be trusted. These are, in most cases, people who havebeen doing this for a long time and have gone to their various collegesand done all the training to become managers and leaders. This is justanother step on the way to getting rid of PVI settings so that childrenwill go straight to school and stay there.
Then you have Kate Detheridge of Churchend Primary School stating thatheads spend most of their summer holidays updating the SEF, then needingat least two or three senior management meetings to discuss it. Whatdoes she think pre-schools do, magic it into place without any work?Most pre-schools that I know take work home with them every night,working till nine or ten o'clock). I thought that it was supposed toworked on as a team, or are all her staff in the pre-school sectionsenior staff?
Then, Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association ofHead Teachers, says that he welcomes the removal of the bureaucratic,form-filling, one-size-fits-all approach. Well, good for him! But isn'tthis the same for PVI settings as well? As I said, in most pre-schoolsyou have people who have worked in the profession for years, and schoolsalso have different teacher:children ratios, making it easier for themto manage.
This is really discrimination against PVI settings. What they are sayingis, one rule for schools and another for PVIs.
And it is a blatant insult to all who work in PVIs, by insinuating thatthey are not as good as teachers in pre-schools attached to primaryschools and cannot be trusted to do their job teaching children inlearning through play. Those pre-schools already get the advance warningof inspections by being attached to a school, unlike PVIs where Ofstedjust turn up on the day.
- John Brookes, chairman, Applejacks Pre-School, Boroughbridge, NorthYorkshire
Send your letters to ... The Editor, Nursery World, 174 HammersmithRoad, London W6 7JP, letter.nw@haymarket.com, 020 8267 8401.