Welcome to the February FSF newsletter.

Many of you will have had February snow over the last week or so – perhaps a flurry, perhaps a drift or two. Maybe enough to make a snowperson or just enough to catch a snowflake on your tongue. Whatever the amount, we hope the children you work with managed to experience it for a moment, whether they are at home or in their school or setting.

At the end of January, the APPG for Childcare and Early Education dedicated a week to raise awareness of the work done by early education professionals. It included a survey for parents and briefing packs for MPs. You can find out more here. The need to recognise the importance of the role of the early years practitioner is underlined by a new report from The Anna Freud Centre for Children and Families. Their Challenges Are Our Challenges aims to ‘understand more about the kinds of experiences nursery workers were facing with the babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers in their care in the UK.’ It reveals that many early educators work with young children who have challenging emotional and behavioural needs. The NDNA summarise the findings of the report here. Meanwhile, schools minister Nick Gibb is focussed on ways to enable children to ‘catch up’ with lost learning, with ideas such as longer school days and shorter summer holidays not being ruled out. We will all be waiting to hear what a return to schools being fully open will look like. 

We are sending warm wishes to everyone celebrating Lunar New Year. 

We'd like to welcome back members from the following authorities, who have renewed their LA subscription. Members from these authorities need do nothing; their individual accounts will automatically be re-subscribed:

Southampton 14th year 

On the FSF we have a couple of new articles this month. In our Primary section, Key Stage teacher Francesca Timms shares how she used a whole school approach – including all the adults – to inspire children to read. And in our Early Years section, early years teacher Rachna Joshi explores aspects of global educational philosophy and how they relate to our current pedagogy.

Don’t forget, you can add your thoughts and discussions about the articles at the end of each article page.

This month in our podcasts we discussed children’s language and communication development with Kirstie Page, founder of Launchpad for Literacy; Gareth Price explained the importance of ‘bringing your whole self to work’ and shared his own experiences; Martin Williams, founder of Early Impact,  joined Ben and Jack to talk about children’s early writing; and Jules and Stephen chatted with Leon Wenham, who reflected on the importance of normalising diversity and recognising and representing every version of family.

Over at Tapestry HQ there has been an update to the Android app – there's some information about it here. On Tapestry.info you will now find a page dedicated to Home Learning, including useful videos talking you through the best features on Tapestry to support learning at home.

And finally, we are having a bit of a Spring Clean on the Forum! You can read more about it in Sue’s post. 

Take care.

From all of us here at the FSF and Tapestry.