Lending Library

Our playgroup is a learning community where our children are not the only learners. Our staff are continually learning along with the children, developing new understandings and allowing practice and thinking to evolve. We are committed to continuing professional development and regularly attend training and workshop sessions to support our children’s learning. We also encourage the developing early years workforce. We welcome early years trainees within our setting mentoring them and allowing them to gain experience.

Playgroups are traditionally supportive communities for young parents at a time in their lives when they are at risk of stress, anxiety and isolation. We also support parents in growing their parenting skills as well as their children. To this end we have created a lending library of a variety of books with information on child development, learning theories, activities and games. Some are on display in our playroom but please ask a staff member if you are interested in borrowing a book from the bookshelf

Thank you Woodland Trust

We were very lucky to get some trees from The Woodland Trust last week. Today we filled up our tractor tyre with compost and planted them around the edges. We hope they will grow up into a great den for us to play in 🤞🏻 #FreeTrees #WoodlandTrust

Chickenpox

We’ve been made aware of a couple of cases of chickenpox within the village. For your information, the current advice from Health Protection Scotland on chickenpox is that

Children who have chickenpox are excluded from playgroup until all vesicles have crusted over (usually 5 days).

and

if you are pregnant and come into contact with chickenpox and have had no history of chickenpox then you should contact your midwife or GP.

Infection Prevention and Control

Woodland Play Sessions come to Cambusbarron Playgroup

We plan to begin a pilot of Woodland Play Sessions after Easter. In order to explain the need fro and benefits of such activities I will be holding an open evening on Thursday March 15th in the playroom in the community centre. I intend to have some photos and videos of the sort of things I would plan to do and to explain the rationale of the project. Ill have some resources, paperwork, leaflets, books etc available for reference and will be happy to answer questions etc.
This is a completely open meeting so everyone is welcome. I have the room booked from 7-9pm but am open to your input on what is the most convenient time for parents, so please just get back to me with what suits you best and I’ll try to go with the majority 😉

Jane

Equal Opportunities

I’ve been working my way through our set of policies, updating and revising. One I was looking at this week was about Equal Opportunities arising from the introduction of the 2010 Equality Act.

It set me thinking about how far we have come in terms of sexual equality. I hope that, for the 3 year olds I am looking after just now, it will be normal to have equal opportunities and that there won’t be jobs that women cant do or be expected to do. But, therein lies a problem. Equality shouldn’t just mean that women can aspire to the same roles as men, it should also mean that men aspire to the same roles as women.

The children I currently look after could be our future doctors, economists, lawyers and politicians. But will they also aspire to be early years workers? In my profession some 98% of the workforce are female. The role model currently being provided to our next generation is that women are the main nurturers and carers of young children. We might claim to promote equality but we are not demonstrating it.

The role of the early years professional, I think, is one of the most important there is. We have the task of supporting and shaping the next generation. Perhaps if more men thought of it that way they wouldn’t leave it all to the women 😉

Infection Prevention and Control

I’ve heard that some of our children have been struck down with a vomiting bug this week and havent been well enough to enjoy our snow days.

Tummy bugs are notoriously difficult to manage in an early years setting as I’m sure you all appreciate however I wanted to let you know that I have been going through our Infection Prevention and Control Policy today to make sure we are all up to date with the latest guidance. This policy is one of our core policies and this incident validates the need for all of our service users and staff to be aware of and be acting in accordance with all of our policy documents.

To this end I am committed to ensure that we have a completely updated set of policies in place by the end of the session. These will require to be ratified per the constitution, however once this process is complete the staff team will be promoting the policies to you.

Meantime, I hope all our little ones are recovering and havent been too poorly. Jordan and I will be reinforcing our hand washing policy and ensuring we and our children are all doing the best they can to stop the spread of infection.

Jane