It's Friday!

[louby loo]

Well I am well and truly pooped!  I'd forgotten how much work littlies are!  She's 17 months (can't believe how quickly time has gone!).  She was like a little angel I have to say. And in true form I took her home and she totally ignored mum at first 🤣 (can't believe how nervous I felt driving on the motorway with her!😳- and it's only I junction 12mins !!!!) 

Glad everyone seems to have a good break, all the pets are well again 😊. Zigzag hope your mum is recovering well, I fully understand what you mean about mixed feeling about going back - I honestly think the whole Covid thing had finished me- I would quite happily not go back Monday 😭. I am definitely thinking about my 'exit plan' now... I was hoping to pass it on to my deputy- but she has said when I go she goes 🙀!!!!

I'm not help with films I'm afraid. I do still think about that film about the lighthouse keeper - I found it so moving. (forgotten the name)

[sunnyday]

'The Light between Oceans' or something like that louby?

[louby loo]

56 minutes ago, sunnyday said:

'The Light between Oceans' or something like that louby?

Yes, that's the one, I found it very moving and it still stays with me.

[sunnyday]

1 hour ago, louby loo said:

Yes, that's the one, I found it very moving and it still stays with me.

Have you read the book?

[Panders]

In contrast I was watching trashy t.v.   Masked Dancer!

[Cait]

On 04/06/2021 at 11:22, sunnyday said:

Hold on - why am I 'furry'?

Legs were shaved last night I'll have you know! 🤣

Er.....  your a pussycat, jumping for a butterfly? 

[Cait]

5 hours ago, Panders said:

Who's your favourite Miss M  - personally I'm very old school and love Joan Hickson?   Geraldine McEwan - possibly but don't think Julia McKenzie is right - and don't get me started on Angela Lansbury😉

HAS to be Joan Hickson.  She is just so absolutely perfect. 

[sunnyday]

8 hours ago, Cait said:

Er.....  your a pussycat, jumping for a butterfly? 

Doh! 🤦‍♀️🤣

[Mouseketeer]

I hope all you half termers have managed some down time …I’ve pottered in the garden, read a book, met friends for lunch and had 2nd vaccine, am now feeling a tad guilty that I’ve given little thought to work other than plant watering (well that’s not strictly true, I have thought about it, just not acted on it 🙈) 

hoping the last half term is good to you all 🤞

 

[Panders]

23 hours ago, Cait said:

HAS to be Joan Hickson.  She is just so absolutely perfect. 

Is it just me, or if you watch Miss M I get a real urge to have proper afternoon tea!

 

Good luck to all with the last term of this extraordinary year.  I think you are all wonderful the way you have managed your settings.  

[louby loo]

56 minutes ago, Panders said:

Is it just me, or if you watch Miss M I get a real urge to have proper afternoon tea 

Just you...... personally I find everything if life gives me the urge for a proper afternoon tea 🤣.

[Cait]

On 05/06/2021 at 22:01, Cait said:

Er.....  your a pussycat, jumping for a butterfly? 

You’re!!!!   I can’t believe that went before I spotted it!  It was only when Sunnyday quoted it that I spotted it!!  Grovelling in apology now.   😳😳😳🤭

[sunnyday]

2 hours ago, Cait said:

You’re!!!!   I can’t believe that went before I spotted it!  It was only when Sunnyday quoted it that I spotted it!!  Grovelling in apology now.   😳😳😳🤭

🤣🤣🤣 it happens to the best of us

[sunnyday]

Can I have a little moan please?

Have had a letter from Ofsted re the 'sale' (I'm not selling, I'm giving) of my pre-school - it is all to do with the timings for when I need to resign my registration in order for the new owner to register in her name...

Last paragraph asks me to contact them, quoting ref at top of letter and assures me that one of their advisers will be happy to assist me

Can you tell where I'm going with this?

I rang, pushed all of the numbers as and when prompted, on phone for ages, then they said "this call will end now" 🤷‍♀️

Guess I will have to email then!

[Panders]

[Froglet]

3 hours ago, sunnyday said:

Can I have a little moan please?

Have had a letter from Ofsted re the 'sale' (I'm not selling, I'm giving) of my pre-school - it is all to do with the timings for when I need to resign my registration in order for the new owner to register in her name...

Last paragraph asks me to contact them, quoting ref at top of letter and assures me that one of their advisers will be happy to assist me

Can you tell where I'm going with this?

I rang, pushed all of the numbers as and when prompted, on phone for ages, then they said "this call will end now" 🤷‍♀️

Guess I will have to email then!

Hugest sympathies!

On 06/06/2021 at 22:08, louby loo said:

Just you...... personally I find everything if life gives me the urge for a proper afternoon tea 🤣.

 I had one as a belated birthday present last week. A friend ordered ‘take out afternoon tea’ from the cafe she’d been going to take me to pre COVID. It was delicious!

[Cait]

18 hours ago, sunnyday said:

Can I have a little moan please?

Have had a letter from Ofsted re the 'sale' (I'm not selling, I'm giving) of my pre-school - it is all to do with the timings for when I need to resign my registration in order for the new owner to register in her name...

Last paragraph asks me to contact them, quoting ref at top of letter and assures me that one of their advisers will be happy to assist me

Can you tell where I'm going with this?

I rang, pushed all of the numbers as and when prompted, on phone for ages, then they said "this call will end now" 🤷‍♀️

Guess I will have to email then!

That was very similar when I left.   I was meant to stay as manager until the start of the autumn term, when my deputy would take over.  This would give me the opportunity to deal properly with year end figures and set up the following year ready for her.  So I was still nominally in charge of everything and there’d be a clean start for her on 1st September.  Nope.  Big O decided unilaterally that I was finished on 19th July, and my deputy was the manager from then!  It left a mess, I can tell you!  She was in trouble because she’d not done the health check thing, (that she had an appointment for over the summer break) and they didn’t have papers etc.  It was all ridiculous and very high-handed.  They think they have total charge of us, and that was really annoying as we were PVI.

[sunnyday]

1 hour ago, Cait said:

That was very similar when I left.   I was meant to stay as manager until the start of the autumn term, when my deputy would take over.  This would give me the opportunity to deal properly with year end figures and set up the following year ready for her.  So I was still nominally in charge of everything and there’d be a clean start for her on 1st September.  Nope.  Big O decided unilaterally that I was finished on 19th July, and my deputy was the manager from then!  It left a mess, I can tell you!  She was in trouble because she’d not done the health check thing, (that she had an appointment for over the summer break) and they didn’t have papers etc.  It was all ridiculous and very high-handed.  They think they have total charge of us, and that was really annoying as we were PVI.

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ oh my actual goodness there could be worse to come then...

[louby loo]

21 hours ago, Froglet said:

Hugest sympathies!

 I had one as a belated birthday present last week. A friend ordered ‘take out afternoon tea’ from the cafe she’d been going to take me to pre COVID. It was delicious!

Oh, I love a take-out one too!!!

 My daughter's birthday tomorrow and we were thinking about a delivered afternoon tea [we have one that delivers complete with stand 😊] ..but I didn't dare book it as we are due a very eminent Ofsted and I felt booking it would jinx the day!

On 08/06/2021 at 16:33, sunnyday said:

Can I have a little moan please?

You have my sympathies, I've spent a couple of hours trying to pay my electric bill online 😭  I've given up and written a cheque!!!

[zigzag]

 I need your wisdom/ideas please. We currently have a group of children who have returned to school with a total lack of respect for our toys/resources. I have never seen anything like it. I see children treading on toys, throwing them and just totally mistreating them. And this is the older children not the younger ones. I have done all the usual things; modelling how to use toys, narrating how to look after them, being shocked, sad and cross when seeing tots mistreated and literally nothing is working and I am at my wits end. I feel like such a failure that I can’t get on top of the problem.  We have always taught the children that if something is broken then we need to put it in the bin and that sometimes accident happen and things get broken, this now seems to be an excuse for them! I have never known a group like it and would really appreciate some ideas of what to do next! I’m so frustrated that this is happening 

[louby loo]

59 minutes ago, zigzag said:

 I need your wisdom/ideas please. We currently have a group of children who have returned to school with a total lack of respect for our toys/resources. I have never seen anything like it. I see children treading on toys, throwing them and just totally mistreating them. And this is the older children not the younger ones. I have done all the usual things; modelling how to use toys, narrating how to look after them, being shocked, sad and cross when seeing tots mistreated and literally nothing is working and I am at my wits end. I feel like such a failure that I can’t get on top of the problem.  We have always taught the children that if something is broken then we need to put it in the bin and that sometimes accident happen and things get broken, this now seems to be an excuse for them! I have never known a group like it and would really appreciate some ideas of what to do next! I’m so frustrated that this is happening 

We have seriously cut down the amount of stuff we have out.   If children are showing a genuine interest in certain resources we will get more out though.

[finleysmaid]

1 hour ago, zigzag said:

 I need your wisdom/ideas please. We currently have a group of children who have returned to school with a total lack of respect for our toys/resources. I have never seen anything like it. I see children treading on toys, throwing them and just totally mistreating them. And this is the older children not the younger ones. I have done all the usual things; modelling how to use toys, narrating how to look after them, being shocked, sad and cross when seeing tots mistreated and literally nothing is working and I am at my wits end. I feel like such a failure that I can’t get on top of the problem.  We have always taught the children that if something is broken then we need to put it in the bin and that sometimes accident happen and things get broken, this now seems to be an excuse for them! I have never known a group like it and would really appreciate some ideas of what to do next! I’m so frustrated that this is happening 

Tough year! I too would be putting as much away as possible i think ....try to rotate stuff more often (like that thing when your own kids go on holiday and when they come back they play really well for a couple of days. ) Is this being led by a particular one or 2? divide and conquer may be??

Playroom syndrome???

[sunnyday]

4 hours ago, zigzag said:

 I need your wisdom/ideas please. We currently have a group of children who have returned to school with a total lack of respect for our toys/resources. I have never seen anything like it. I see children treading on toys, throwing them and just totally mistreating them. And this is the older children not the younger ones. I have done all the usual things; modelling how to use toys, narrating how to look after them, being shocked, sad and cross when seeing tots mistreated and literally nothing is working and I am at my wits end. I feel like such a failure that I can’t get on top of the problem.  We have always taught the children that if something is broken then we need to put it in the bin and that sometimes accident happen and things get broken, this now seems to be an excuse for them! I have never known a group like it and would really appreciate some ideas of what to do next! I’m so frustrated that this is happening 

Oh zigzag that's not good - I have been known to put things away - "if you can't play nicely with x, y, z then we can't have them anymore" <best sad face>

[Cait]

14 hours ago, sunnyday said:

Oh zigzag that's not good - I have been known to put things away - "if you can't play nicely with x, y, z then we can't have them anymore" <best sad face>

Yep.  That was my modus operandi too.  

[sunnyday]

3 hours ago, Cait said:

Yep.  That was my modus operandi too.  

Phew!

I thought about this, this morning - we have a huge (and I really mean huge) collection of dinosaurs, we took them outside with us this morning, my warning was "there are lots and lots of dinosaurs to play with, if there is any arguing I will just take them all back inside" - I would have too, but no need, absolutely no arguing at all...

[louby loo]

Friday again!

I can't believe we've only been back a week, seems a lot longer 😳

I good week on the whole, although our landlords (scouts) have been having the flat roof part of the building done and it's been sooooo noisy 😭 but at least the good weather means we've been outside most of the time.

[sunnyday]

Tis indeed another Friday!

Very good week for us - phew!

Another 'last' for me today when we took our little group round to visit Primary school, all went very well which was lovely, reception class teacher confirmed that she doesn't want/need any written transition docs - whoop, whoop! She said that info gleaned verbally from me + upcoming meetings with parents and children + transition sessions (they all get 4 of these) are more than enough

Looking forward to the weekend, lots on my TDL but will try really hard to get most of it completed this afternoon

Hope the weekend is kind to all x

[sunnyday]

Just had text from youngest son 'we are doing food and football on Sunday' - yay sounds like fun to me! 😃

[zigzag]

 

Firstly, thank you all for making me realise that it’s not just us that are having these problems as selfish as that sounds!

Just wanted to share what I did today! During session the Barbies had been spread over the floor so I walked up to them and very loudly said, “well you are not being looked after, the children don’t want you” and put them in the bin (it was a clean brand new bin) well, you could have heard a pin drop and their mouths needed picking up from the floor. A couple of minutes later one of the older children dropped her jumper on the floor and left it whilst she was dressing up, they are well trained to put jumpers in cubby holes, so I did the same and put it in the bin. I very loudly said that if the children decide to look after the toys then they need to take them out of the bin and put them where they belong. This worked so well, I’m aware that it sounds quite drastic but I needed to do something to shock them and wow it sure worked.  This continued into the outside area as well. We will see what happens next week!....

[sunnyday]

6 minutes ago, zigzag said:

 

 

Firstly, thank you all for making me realise that it’s not just us that are having these problems as selfish as that sounds!

Just wanted to share what I did today! During session the Barbies had been spread over the floor so I walked up to them and very loudly said, “well you are not being looked after, the children don’t want you” and put them in the bin (it was a clean brand new bin) well, you could have heard a pin drop and their mouths needed picking up from the floor. A couple of minutes later one of the older children dropped her jumper on the floor and left it whilst she was dressing up, they are well trained to put jumpers in cubby holes, so I did the same and put it in the bin. I very loudly said that if the children decide to look after the toys then they need to take them out of the bin and put them where they belong. This worked so well, I’m aware that it sounds quite drastic but I needed to do something to shock them and wow it sure worked.  This continued into the outside area as well. We will see what happens next week!....

Go zigzag!