Welcome to the FSF August Newsletter

We have all been looking for ways to stay cool over the last few weeks. Meanwhile the rhythm of the year continues, with settings and Reception classrooms ready to receive new children in September.

But the challenges also continue, with early years providers facing rising food, staffing and energy costs in addition to difficulties recruiting educators, and sadly in some cases this is forcing the closure of settings. You can read one news report on this here. And you can find out more about the Department of Education’s proposed changes to the funding formulae via the consultation link here.

On the FSF we have a couple of articles for your late summer reading. Developmental play expert Carly Budd explains the importance of play for babies' brain development; and Caroline Vollans continues her series on intergenerational learning with a piece about the first intergenerational nursery in the UK. You can find them both on our Articles page.

If you like to do your reflecting via listening, we have one new podcast for you this month, plus a couple of podcast rewinds to revisit previous conversations. Carly Budd joined us to discuss developmental play with babies and young children – a great audio companion to her article. And we returned to Kerry Murphy and Emily Lees discussing Ableism, as well as Kiran Satti sharing her love of alternative fairy tales. As always, you can listen to these, and all our podcasts here, or wherever you usually listen.

And from Tapestry HQ, a reminder to check out the Infographics Library where you will find lots of useful things to share with families and your team. You can find it here.

Wishing you all a safe and happy month,

Helen, Steve and all of us at the FSF and Tapestry