The Foundation Stage Forum Community
Welcome to the FSF – a community for early years professionals. Engage in conversations, offer and receive advice and support, make connections. Discover our library of education articles and podcast episodes to enhance your reflective practice. Working together to achieve high-quality early childhood education.
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Posts:471,035
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Members:51,633
Technology in the early years
by Richard Waite
Early Years Educator Richard Waite shares his passion for helping us all to understand the importance of sharing technology with young children.
Podcast: Telling the stories from the Early Years
Jules chats with Elly Roberts, Editor of Early Years Educator, about the importance of creating a community of practice, raising the status of the early years, and finding and telling the stories from the sector. (edited)
View the full articl…
The importance of parental engagement
Jamel C Campbell reflects on parent partnership in the early years, with newfound perspectives and appreciation since becoming a parent himself.
Latest
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New setup screens
From today, when a new account is logged into for the first time or when a new manager first logs into an existing Tapestry, they will see a 'setup checklist'. This is a list of some of the most important elements of a Tapestry account e.g. Features, user permissions, and contact details. New managers should check they are all set up in the way that works best for their school, early years setting, or childminding business. All the items in the checklist are available in the control panel. -
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Register CSV Exports
You can now export your register data (for children and for staff) in CSV files. You'll find that within the Booking section - in Exports > Register. -
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Relative phone numbers and collection passwords
Once a manager has added a phone number and/or collection password for a relative, those will appear on the relative's profile page under User Details. -
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Professional development
Hi, I'm working on my last unit of my Cache Level 3 Early Years Workforce (Early Years Educator) and as part of my course I was to research the theoretical perspectives on professional development and share my findings in an online forum. From my research I have found that two theories have been particularly significant in understanding the reflective process. These are Kolb’s Learning Cycle and Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle. Kolb’s Learning Cycle: David Kolb, an American educational theorist, developed the experiential learning cycle, which is widely used today for reflection. His theory suggests that in order to learn effectively, four processes must happen. These are: 1. Concrete experience – This is doing or having an experience that creates a learning experience. In an Early Years setting, this could be carrying out an activity with the children for the first time. 2. Reflective observation – This is where the practitioner would review and reflect on the experience. This could be that the practitioner thinks about the aspects of the task that worked well and the those that were not as successful. 3. Abstract conceptualisation – This is where conclusions are made and the individual learns from the experience. This could be where the practitioner decides on what changes need to be made to the activity for it to work better next time. 4. Active experimentation – This is the stage where the practitioner would apply what they have learned from the experience and put it into practice. This would be trying the task again, but with the changes that had been thought about in the previous stage. The Kolb’s process is a cycle, because once we have tried out new ideas, we may need to reflect on them again. Many models of reflective practice have been based on Kolb’s Learning Cycle. By practitioners using this process, we are can think about our practice and the elements that need more developing, by reflecting on what we do and then implementing the changes we make to improve, before beginning the cycle again. Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle: Graham Gibbs developed his ‘Reflective Cycle’ in 1988, which was adapted from Kolb’s work. Gibbs’ approach gave more structure to the process of learning from experiences. His cycle has six stages. These are: 1. Description – The practitioner first describes the experience to identify what happened. This could be describing a task that was carried out with the children in the setting. 2. Feelings – At this stage, the practitioner identifies and assess how they feel about the experience. This is important, to understand how the emotions that were felt about the experience influenced them. 3. Evaluation – After looking at and assessing their feelings, the practitioner evaluates the experience, considering what the positive and the negatives were and what could have been done differently. 4. Analysis – So that the practitioner understands what happened during the experience and why, they analyse it, trying to make sense of what happened by looking at the reasons why. 5. Conclusion – At this stage, conclusions are made about the experience and through their learning, the practitioner then decides what they will do with that learning in the future. 6. Action plan – This is the stage where the individual would put into practice the points of action decided at the previous stage. The conclusion stage of Gibbs’ cycle could identify that further training is needed and this would be put into the action plan stage, which links to professional development. From looking at both of these cycles, it seems the reflection sheets I would fill in after each task I carried out in my settings throughout my studies, is based more so on Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle. This cycle, I feel goes into more detail and so allowed me to really learn from my experiences and develop my practice. -
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Preschool Practitioner, Chobham
Due to expansion within our term time only setting, we are looking for someone who is a passionate and dedicated Early Years Practitioner to join our preschool in providing high-quality early childhood education. The ideal candidate will have experience working with children, possess strong leadership skills, work well as a team and be committed to creating a nurturing learning environment. Responsibilities: - Plan and implement engaging and educational activities for preschool children - Create a safe and supportive learning environment that promotes children's social, emotional, and cognitive development - Communicate effectively with parents, providing regular updates on children's progress - Manage classroom activities and ensure adherence to health and safety regulations - Foster a love for learning through interactive play, storytelling, and creative expression Experience: The successful candidate should demonstrate the following skills and experience: - Drive to inspire young minds and make a positive impact on children's lives - Excellent communication skills to engage with children, parents, and colleagues effectively - Proficiency in English language - Previous experience working with young children in a nursery or childcare setting - Strong leadership abilities to guide and support children's learning journey - Relevant Level 3 or above childcare qualifications Job Type: Full-time Pay: Dependant on qualifications Expected hours: No more than 32.5 per week -
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Version 5.1 of the iOS Tapestry app
This is the latest update to the iOS app. This is for those of you using the Tapestry app on Apple phones and tablets. As well as a few tweaks and improvements, this release includes the ability to view, add, and remove Body Maps. -
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Small changes for Invoicing
A few new small additions/tweaks have been added to our Invoicing feature. Users can now: - manually set the invoice date and invoice due date when creating an invoice, - create payments for inactive children, - add funded hours to the booking and billing data exports, - see an "as of" date for the account balances shown on invoices.- 1
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How to bulk export Care Diary entries
In this tutorial we are going to look at how to bulk export your Care Diary data. I'll go through doing this for individual children and for multiple children. Please note, as this is done through the 'Control Panel', only managers on Tapestry will be able to export Care Diary entries. Let's start with individual children. Begin by heading to the Control Panel by selecting your name (1) and then 'Control Panel' (2). Next, navigate to 'Manage Children' (3). Select which child that you would like to export Care Diary entries for (1). Click the cog icon next to their name (2) and then 'Bulk export care diary' (3). Start by choosing which type of entry, or entries, you would like to export (1). By default, all options will be ticked. You can untick any entry types you don't want to include but you must leave at least one selected. Then, choose the time frame of entries that you want to export (2). You can choose what order these are shown in with either latest or oldest showing first. Next, you need to select how you would like to sort the PDF export (3). This can be done by date or by entry type. Lastly, you'll need to decide whether you wish to include comments (4). If you do not wish to proceed you can choose to cancel (5) or, if you are happy, select download PDF (6). The PDF will be generated through your downloads. The next screen you are taken to will allow you to 'View your Downloads' (1) or, go back to the 'Manage Children' page (2). To proceed with accessing the PDF, head to your downloads and select, 'Download' (1). This page can also be accessed through the 'Control Panel' > 'Downloads' (2). A ZIP file will then be generated which you can 'Download' (1). Once accessed (2), you can store/print the Care Diary data as needed. To export the Care Diary for multiple children, make sure you are back on the 'Manage Children' page. Select the boxes next to the children's names (1) or, if you want to select all children on the page, change 'Select Items' to 'All' (2). When the pop-up appears on the bottom right, choose 'Export care diary as PDF's' (3) and then click 'Go' (4). As before, the next page you will be taken to is where you can decide what to include in the export. At the top of the page you will see which children will be included and you can always include more by clicking 'Select Children' (1) and adding them. When you are happy with the details included, click 'Download PDF' (2). Making your way back to your downloads by either selecting 'View Downloads' on the next screen or, accessing it through the Control Panel > Downloads, click 'Download (1) to create the ZIP file containing the PDF (2). Back to Main Tutorials Page -
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New Feature: Messaging
Today we have released our ‘Messaging’ feature for the apps and the browser! This new feature will allow 1 to 1 direct conversations between a staff member and either a relative, or another staff member. A few things to know: Users can receive notifications, including push notifications to their devices, when they receive a new message. Managers will be able to see all conversations. They will be able to delete messages from conversations they are not a part of, but they cannot add their own messages into a conversation between 2 other people. Users will be able to see a date stamp for when messages were sent and received, and will see ‘seen’ and a date stamp when a message they have sent has been read. Managers can disable it for all/specific relatives and staff within the User Permissions section of the Control Panel. Too see some pictures and find out a bit more, take a look at our Messaging Feature page. Managers will see the icon for it on the browser version of Tapestry automatically, but they will have to specifically enable it for it to: appear for staff and relatives, to show up on the apps, and for people on their account to start using it.
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