Foundation Stage Unit Dilemma 2!

[Guest]

Hi again!

More help or thoughts needed please! My foundation stage unit houses both nursery and reception children. Both sessions begin at 8.55am, which is great, as all the children come in together and settle into their keyworker groups straight away. My problem is the timings at the end of the session. Nursery session ends at 11.30, unless the children are staying for a school lunch in which case they go off to the dining room at 11.30. However, the reception children do not finish for their lunch until 11.55am - although realistically at about 11.45 we start toileting etc.

 

My dilemma is with the reception children. Currently we begin to tidy away just after 11am, and then both sets of children go back to their 'class group' in different parts of the unit. For nursery this means there is time for a short end of day storytime/ song session etc and it works very well. However I am very conscious that for the reception children this is not working so well, as they are in their whole class group for so much longer, and it isn't fair to expect them to sit for so long. What should we do?

 

I have considered not making the nursery children tidy up and taking them off to a seperate part of the unit for storytime, which would allow extra time for the reception children to carry on playing, and then they could do the tidying up and have a shorter session on the carpet, but i do think tidying up is just as important for nursery children as it is for the reception.

 

I also considered seeing if we could move the reception lunches to the same time as the nursery ones, but this would mean starting the afternoon session again at 12.30 which would make the afternoon session too long in my opinion.

 

Any ideas/solutions would be warmly appreciated. I'm sure we can't be the only ones in this position, and I just wondered how other settings managed it.

 

Many thanks - hope it kind of makes sense!

[Guest]

Hi

It's certainly not just you - we go through this every year and term as we have almost exactly the same set up as you. It only getes worse as you try to eke out the time that the F2 children spend on class activities as they get nearer to Y1.

 

I don't really have an answer (I'm hoping soemone with more experience can help us both!) but I have got about 10 different timetables than we've used over the past 3 years! I've come to the conclusion that every setting has a differenet way of doing it and I've not yet found a perfect way.

 

One thing you could do is to break up that long whole class time with the F2s at the end of the moring with some physical activities/games in the middle of the session.

 

Normally I write the timetable which never pleases everyone and I realised staff just didn't understand how difficult it was or the issues involved. This term I got the rest of the staff to agree a timetable together. They've ended up with everyone having Independent Learning, then phonics. At 10:50 everyone has a short whole class time and at about 11:00 some F2s have focused group time following this up while the rest go back out to a 20 min restricted Independent Learning session (with some rooms closed off as we have less staff as some staff have gone with the F1s). In this time they too could choose to follow up the whole class session or not as the case may be!

 

To be honest I'm not sure yet if it working so this post may not be the most helpful you've read!

[Guest]

Our nursery children go home at 11.30 and then our f/t children go for their lunch at 11.40.

All our reception/ infant children have 1 hour and fifteen mins for their lunch so they come back into the unit at 12.55, which gives the afternoon session children 5 mins to come into the cloakroom in peace and get settled.

this works very well for us .

hope this helps

Debs

[catma]

Will the change to 15 hours impact more on the unit I wonder - nursery might be there for longer??

Cx

[Guest]

also having lots of dilemmas about my daily routine - but lunch time works well - our reception eat in the unit so we organised our lunch time to suit us. morning session finishes at 11.40 for all children, with some nursery going home, some staying to lunch club and reception having their lunch break. 2 1/2 hours seems to work fine for us in afternoon.

[WChurchill]

Will the change to 15 hours impact more on the unit I wonder - nursery might be there for longer??

Cx

Is the change to 15 hours imminent?

[Guest]

Thanks to everyone who has replied! Think i may have solved my dilemma anyway, well, at least until Monday when I put it into practise! I spoke with my head today and asked if recep lunch could be at 11.40 instead of 11.55. They usually finish lunch at 1.00pm but will now come back in at 12.45 the same time as the afternoon nursery session begins instead of 1.00pm, so fingers crossed this will work for us. The kitchen staff weren't too happy, but I'm hoping it wont be too bad, as they are already serving nursery dinners at that time anyway! It should help with fluidity i hope, and lets the foundation stage more or less eat together.

 

Does it sound reasonable? My cook didn't think so.......

 

Thanks - really do appreciate your views!

 

PS: 15 hours is imminent, but even tho my authority haven't brought this in yet, we already offer it as standard, as having a school lunch counts as nursery time.