As we move into the last few weeks of the 2017/2018 session I am looking forward to the 2018/2019 session and beyond. To ensure our service remains relevant and to meet your needs I am looking to clarify our Mission Statement which currently serves as our Vision, Values and Aims. Our Mission Statement has not been properly reviewed for several years and as we now have a different set of children, parents, committee and staff, I feel that we should make time to review it and see if there are any changes required.
Vision, Values and Aims for playgroup are not perhaps things you have thought too much about but these statements describe what we are about, what we want for our children and are what makes our setting unique. Obviously there will be common elements in all early years services’ statements but our Vision, Values and Aims should be a reflection of what we as a comunity want to see in our service rather than a standard set of statements.

This is our current mission statement :Cambusbarron Playgroup sessions run during school term time from 9:15am – 12:25pm. Children aged from 2 1/2 to pre-school are welcome to attend. Cambusbarron Playgroup runs in partnership with Stirling Council and can offer funded (free) places for eligible children. A payment of £10 per session is otherwise payable.

Our Playgroup is run by an experienced and fully qualified early years professional staff team who aim to

• Create respectful, warm and inclusive environments, both in and outdoors, where children are happy and feel secure.
• Use a child centred approach to nurture and develop each child as an individual learner.
• Provide a breadth of learning experiences which challenge, interest and inspire children
• Offer a welcoming atmosphere where we build trusting relationships with families and everyone is valued.
• Be committed to work closely with our community and education partners.
• Provide a quality service with a highly trained staff team who are committed to ongoing training and improvements.

We know that parents are the most significant influence in a child’s early learning experiences. We welcome and value parental involvement in our setting.

I’d like to have a bit of a brainstorm and see what you think our Vision, Values and Aims should be. So, please email me back with your thoughts and suggestions. Alternatively you could complete the following Survey Monkey https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/X8TBJSD

I’m more than happy to discuss in person and indeed it might be a good discusssion to have over food and wine at the AGM this week!

Please do give this some thought, there are no right or wrong answers, I’d just like to know what your picture of our playgroup should be. The views of people who have been using our service for several years or who are only about to start using our service are equally relevant so please dont consider that you dont know enough yet to make a contribution or that you wont be here long enough for it to make a difference. It really does!

I look forward to hearing your opinions.
Jane

We have spent the last few sessions brightening up our playgroup garden. The children have been hard at work and we think it is starting to look really lovely.

We are very grateful to the Popular Institute of Cambusbarron for giving us money to make our garden look brighter. The children wanted lots of colour in their garden and so we chose plants that are red, pink, orange, yellow and blue. We spent today, aptly Outdoor Classroom Day, in the garden planting them. We now have 2 lovely trees, an apple and a pear, some very beautiful flowers and we are hoping for a great harvest from our vegetable plot too.

Before

Before

Holes are for jumping in

Or sitting in

Our new pear tree

Making sure its steady

Tree roots

More roots

Blueberries

Story time

After

Delighted and very grateful to announce that we have been awarded £1500 funding by the Popular Institute of Cambusbarron to make more improvements to our outdoor space. In light of the vandalism we’ve recently experienced we will be investigating CCTV!