Involving Parents In The Setting Ideas

[Guest]

Hi Everyone

 

I was wondering if you could let me know how you involve parents in your settings .

We have a parent rota and invite parents in. Generally they prepare snack, wash up, make tea and then spend time in the setting watching how their child plays etc.

We also invite them to join the commitee.

 

Lately we have found alot of parents are not signing up for the rota and those that do don't really want to do anything.

We obviously want to work with parents, so any ideas would be great.

 

thanking you in anticipation

[Rufus]

Have you tried a coffee morning type thing? Often parents will start to come in more once they build relationships with each other.

[narnia]

Can I play devil's advocate here, without offending you?? I distinctly recall the first time I was on the parent's rota, many years ago. They gave me a stack of paper and told me to cut it in half for the children to paint on. Then I was told to wash the paint brushes, make tea for the staff and tidy up the aprons etc. No interaction with the children ( pre CRB days!), but I recall feeling mighty fed up and not wanting to bother again. But I perservered and started to sit with children to do puzzles and games etc, which was much more enjoyable. I just wonder if your parents are being given mundane jobs, they MIGHT feel a bit under-valued? maybe if you ask them to help with the children in a specific task cooking or dough, anything except washing up!) they might be more inclined to come in. As I said, i don't want to offend you, particularly if I misunderstood your original post.

[Guest pamgreen]

We are a private setting and don't have parent rotas, however we invite them to attend forest school, inviting them on outings, sports day, end of year graduation I guess the usual things. One thing we did start last term was exploring together workshops. The first one was when we invited parents to accompany their child to forest school. We had both mums and dads attend. There was a challenge to make a house for animals and the children and parents worked together it was fantastic. We finished off by having a camp fire and singing around the fire. The learning potential for children at forest school was highlighted and the parents evaluated the session and they really enjoyed it. We also had an exploring phonics workshop which was equally successful

[Guest]

We have started to organise "drop in days"

 

Once a month and on various days of the week (so hopefully if parents work they will catch one day when they are off at some point)

 

On these days staff are available to chat,to talk to parents about why play is important, there are activities out to show parents the benefits of play and for them to have a go themselves.

 

Outdoors is available too and this year we want to add in a parental visit or two to the conservation area with the children!

 

It definitely helped build parental relationships last year!

 

We dont have a rota system but wouldnt give jobs to do eve if we did!!

[Guest]

We have gone down the parent rota route before with differing results. It all depends on the parents doesn't it?

 

We had one parent who felt we "didn't use her enough to do the washing up, preparing snack" to leave us to do what we do best - be with the children, many who argued about why they couldn't take children to the toilet and another who expected to be told what to do every few minutes (brought it up in a committee meeting, she was a member, that I hadn't directed her enough!)

 

Then we had a period where we just got no one turning up to their time so we dropped it.

 

However we involve parents now by:

 

having a parent rota for snack

inviting parents in for craft/gardening/talking about their work activities

and of course inviting them onto the committee

 

and we have been lucky enough to:

have a regular snack, sometimes with home grown produce

been invited to dig up potatoes in a parents garden

had a keen art/craft parent in to make paper flowers

had parents in to help make fruit salad/sandwiches

had grandparents in to do some knitting

had dads in to talk about being an airline pilot, racing cars, using a tractor, driving a fire engine, being a police man

 

We frequently ask parents what they can do or how they can help so maybe you could find out what your parents can do!

 

Hope this helps with some ideas

 

Rachel

[Guest]

We have gone down the parent rota route before with differing results. It all depends on the parents doesn't it?

 

We had one parent who felt we "didn't use her enough to do the washing up, preparing snack" to leave us to do what we do best - be with the children, many who argued about why they couldn't take children to the toilet and another who expected to be told what to do every few minutes (brought it up in a committee meeting, she was a member, that I hadn't directed her enough!)

 

Then we had a period where we just got no one turning up to their time so we dropped it.

 

However we involve parents now by:

 

having a parent rota for snack

inviting parents in for craft/gardening/talking about their work activities

and of course inviting them onto the committee

 

and we have been lucky enough to:

have a regular snack, sometimes with home grown produce

been invited to dig up potatoes in a parents garden

had a keen art/craft parent in to make paper flowers

had parents in to help make fruit salad/sandwiches

had grandparents in to do some knitting

had dads in to talk about being an airline pilot, racing cars, using a tractor, driving a fire engine, being a police man

 

We frequently ask parents what they can do or how they can help so maybe you could find out what your parents can do!

 

Hope this helps with some ideas

 

Rachel

That sounds like our problem so thanks for your input

 

Sally