It's Friday!

[sunnyday]

On ‎4‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 07:40, zigzag said:

I tried desensitisation but it didn’t work and boy was it traumatic.  Also went for hypnotherapy but after the first session I found out I was pregnant and because I had previously had two miscarriages, the hypnotherapist decided not to continue with the frog therapy but did a couple of sessions of pregnancy hypnosis instead!  My problem is, that wherever I go I always find a frog or toad!  I could be in the middle of a concrete jungle and I would still come across one!  It used to stop me going out after dark and really impacted on my life, I am better with that now and have the attitude that I will just deal with it when it happens. It’s just the panic attack and the freezing with fear that is so horrendous to try and cope with.

That is so sad and I feel very guilty and ashamed of my earlier comments about 'croaking', sorry

[sunnyday]

On ‎4‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 19:23, Panders said:

Yes, I think it is a "fright" that does it.   I remember what happened to me - a bird flew down the chimney, which was quite common back in the day.   My mum couldn't cope with it and called a neighbour in who carried it out in her apron I think.   Since then …….

One of my staff members has a bird phobia - she grew up in a farming family and had two very much older brothers, they decided, when she was really young that it would be a great idea and lots of fun to lock her in a barn full of chicken  

[Panders]

Sometimes, brothers are "smelly".   

[louby loo]

1 hour ago, Panders said:

Sometimes, brothers are "smelly".   

My older brother tried to 'rig up' one off my dolls so she lit up in the middle of the night (well probably about 9pm as we were  very young )......... anyway he must have fallen asleep - and I found the wire and pulled it... scared the living daylights out of him!!.

As a side note- do children play with electrical transformers anymore or are they classed as dangerous now?   We seemed to spend all day long making lighting circuits etc, I'm surprised neither of us grew up to be electricians.

[sunnyday]

Happy Friday everyone

Have a great weekend!

[sunnyday]

20 hours ago, louby loo said:

My older brother tried to 'rig up' one off my dolls so she lit up in the middle of the night (well probably about 9pm as we were  very young )......... anyway he must have fallen asleep - and I found the wire and pulled it... scared the living daylights out of him!!.

As a side note- do children play with electrical transformers anymore or are they classed as dangerous now?   We seemed to spend all day long making lighting circuits etc, I'm surprised neither of us grew up to be electricians.

My younger brother used to set 'traps' for me in his room - he was convinced that I used to go in there and interfere with his meccano models - silly sod I had better things to do 

Think my spelling of 'mecanno' might be a bit dodgy...…..

[sunnyday]

What was that I said about not using any precious weekend time working on pre-school 'stuff' 

Have been making advertising posters/flyers - this is all new to me have never needed to worry about advertising before but I really need a few more new recruits for September...…..

[Panders]

wjhere are  they gping?    I found one of my teenage ex-pupils who lived in the area, she did some local streets on a letterbox drop for me, for pocket money!   Are you on your local Mumsnet, or Netmums?

Edited April 27, 2019 by Panders

[sunnyday]

1 hour ago, Panders said:

wjhere are  they gping?    I found one of my teenage ex-pupils who lived in the area, she did some local streets on a letterbox drop for me, for pocket money!   Are you on your local Mumsnet, or Netmums?

No - thanks for the tip

Funny old business this advertising lark - I don't want too many more children, just two or three more for September would do...….

I do think perhaps we are not what people are looking for really as we only offer 15 hours, I'm too old to think about changing to full days 

[Mouseketeer]

I feel the same Sunnyday, we are full days but feel the way to go really is to extend our hours and offer a holiday club but I don’t want to do it and my staff work term time because that’s what they want so it would mean employing more staff and I just can’t be bothered if I’m honest 😕 

[lsp]

We are also term time only. Over last few years we have increased our opening times to 9 - 3 everyday. We seem to have a steady trickle of children. This year has been 'different'. More movement -  we have had new children start but more children move away. We are actually finishing the year with more or less same number as we started. Not too bad but the poor funding rate and the fact that most of our children are on funded hours only means we are chasing every penny. We have thought about holiday club but do we take older siblings? Also taking under 2's in session? Difficult times.

[finleysmaid]

There is definitely a change afoot! We are lucky that a lot of our parents work in the education industry and therefore are happy for us to work term time only but we have had to extend our hours and I have just made the decision to operate our after school club 5 days a week ...losing my precious staff meeting time but we have no choice. I hire the hall to a local company over the summer (they need storage for the summer season) and the other holidays will be covered by some holiday provision now . Any remaining spare time will be used for maintenance  In our area parents are a) being forced back to work because of universal credits or b) being forced back to work because they are 'expected' to by society!

I have seriously reduced the number of 2 year olds (it makes NO financial sense in our case as we need to put in extra staff for them and then that reduces our flexibility .

We take children from the local school for after school club and walk them over ( so up to 10 years old) this is run by 2 of my younger staff who wanted more hours/money.

[sunnyday]

Some really interesting posts - mousie, Isp and fm

Have been giving this a lot of thought - some of that was at 3am this morning - not good.....

We are in a really small village and I only know of two families who have chosen full day care over a place with us, fair enough that' s what they need. Lots of new houses have been built here over the past couple of years but they are all 4/5 bedroom executive style, these are being sold for £870,00 - 970,00 hardly likely to attract young families with a stay at home parent, so there are just not many under fives in our village. We get a lot of custom from outside of the village, this helped enormously by families who want their children to attend our outstanding primary school. The last two parents to contact me, visit pre-school and sign up their children have said "oh I didn't know you were here" - this was what led me to the conclusion that I need to do some serious advertising. It has now occurred to me that there has been a change in primary school admin staff and that quite possibly the new lady is not signposting parents to me (used to hear a lot of "I got your number from the school"), easily remedied - I will visit school tomorrow, take some 'flyers' and a poster with me and have a friendly word with the new staff member.....

Further to that - I will update our entry on the parish website, advertise through the village FB page, ask doctors surgeries in the two nearest villages to display posters for me (we don't have our own surgery), ask the library in the nearest village to display a poster, hold flyers for me......

If all of this fails to bring me new entrants then we will have to think about all staff, including me, taking a reduction in days worked during first term

My head tells me - perhaps it's time to 'admit defeat' and close

My heart tells me - no, continue to battle on, closing the the pre-school would be a loss to the village and I still love my job, I'm really not ready to 'throw in the towel'

[finleysmaid]

one of the other things to try is to work out if there are places MOST of your families visit and advertise there.....coffee shops/play areas/garden centres etc this seems to have worked a bit for us

[sunnyday]

In other news - we have a field (belonging to us), behind our house - we have some serious earth moving to do up there...…..we always have the use of a digger, but just for this afternoon we have use of a dumper:

Me: Why don't I drive the dumper whilst you drive the digger?

Mr S: You wouldn't be able to drive the dumper love

Huh - bet I could, but that's fine I have other things to be getting on with such as reading my book 

I will just take up the occasional cuppa then 

[Panders]

I had parents say similar things to me, Sunnyday - oh we didn't know you were here - and I could only think the best way to spread the word was  word of mouth of other parents and Facebook,  eg,where do you start as a parent with your first born looking for pre-school - you ask other parents, or return maybe to the pre-school you went to as a child yourself we certainly had some of those!  If you are from out of area, I doubt that many begin with the Ofsted site, they may try local authority, but they will be going on line initially.    In the final year we had a huge poster on the gates for passers-by to see.  We were lucky also that there was a toddler group meeting in the hall, but surprisingly didn't get too many sign ups from there in the last few years because a lot of those attending were childminders and their mindees, so not in charge of that kind of decision.

I think approaching the school and re-affirming connections is an excellent idea, I took flyers to our closest and they  very kindly popped a flyer in children's bags in Year R at any rate.  I also left some flyers at other toddler groups in the area and had a postcard up in the Post Office, right by the counter where everyone queued up.  I also  looked our group up on Netmums etc. and whilst they had some details, they didn't have all details just the bare essentials and frankly one of the freebie magazines for families in the area only had our name and a telephone number, whereas to my way of thinking, you needed our address too at the very least.   Being an owner/provider is also different from committee run inasmuch  that it was my understanding we couldn't fundraise, but parents could do it out of their own goodness of heart and donate items or money to us.    We would have a presence at some local events and sponsor in a small way some charitable events, but as funds got tighter, as Finleysmaid quite rightly said, some things must be put aside.

So jolly hard Sunnyday.  

 

[sunnyday]

Mystery solved - well perhaps...….

Have visited the primary school and spoken to admin and to the reception class teacher - she said "oh I think I know what's happened, I have heard parents saying that it's no good applying to you because you always have such a long waiting list" 

To be fair, that has always been the case up to September of last year - have always had more children than I knew what to with!

[Panders]

Do hope this is the case Sunnyday

[Cait]

We also had that problem at one time, however, a notice in the window saying we had places for the coming September brought a flurry of applications!   

[sunnyday]

So here we are again and not only is it Friday but we have a long weekend - yay - have a good one y'all 

[louby loo]

1 hour ago, sunnyday said:

So here we are again and not only is it Friday but we have a long weekend - yay - have a good one y'all 

To be honest it's scarring how quickly these Fridays are coming around!

[zigzag]

3 hours ago, louby loo said:

To be honest it's scarring how quickly these Fridays are coming around!

I agree, but also quite nice as well!🤐

[Froglet]

21 hours ago, sunnyday said:

So here we are again and not only is it Friday but we have a long weekend - yay - have a good one y'all 

I am very, very glad of both this week.

[zigzag]

Both my boys rowing in the world gig championships at the Isles of Scilly this weekend.  So have peace and quiet until Tuesday!

[Cait]

It's all downhill now! 

[louby loo]

1 hour ago, Cait said:

It's all downhill now! 

Only this year it feels like it's all uphill! 

[sunnyday]

15 hours ago, Cait said:

It's all downhill now! 

It really is and quite scary I seem to have lots that I still want to do  

[Cait]

It was that February half term when you realise it's halfway through the school year that always used to hit home with me!  

[zigzag]

There is not enough hours in the week to do everything!

[sunnyday]

Why is it that this has felt like a long week when we started with a Bank holiday Monday? 

Hope everyone has a good weekend