Sleep time

[caffinefreak]

Hi All

 

I'm looking for some advice form those of you who have children who sleep at nursery. We have a separate sleep room for our babies but in our toddler room and 2-3's room, the children sleep on low level beds or mats. In order to fit all the beds in, we have to push our resources and equipment to the sides of the room, we leave a table out in 2-3's and put out calm activities for any non sleepers, (in toddler rooms they all sleep), however, our Early Years Consultant has said that we shouldn't really do this as it takes away those areas for the children who are not sleeping, this is usually only 1 or 2 children but I can see what she is saying, that over sleep time, those learning opportunities are not available to the awake children.

 

I wondered how you manage this? WE have looked at the possibility of combining 2 rooms at lunchtime so that one becomes the awake room, however, we are not sure that we could fit the amount of beds needed into the 'sleep' room.

 

We also thought maybe our awake children in 2-3's could go an play in preschool during sleep time, but that would impact on ratios as they are under 3 and over lunchtime, we have less staff on duty anyway (in ratio for 1:8 but not if it was 1:4)

 

Any ideas would be very welcome

 

Thank you

[Guest]

You can only do the best you can in the space you have available. I imagine you vary the activities that are available to the non-sleepers, and that you provide the full range of choice over the rest of the day. After all most settings can only offer a range of activities at any one time and just keep swopping them over as the day progresses.

[finleysmaid]

as long as your staff are available to work with the children then you should be alright in ratios...i would have to say that i would not be happy as a parent if my little one had to stay quiet for an hour or so just because their friends were sleeping....i would put them in the 3's room (you could put high viz vest's on them if you needed to keep an eye on them!)

....only my opinion of course and i don't do really little ones!!