SueFinanceManager

I do think PJ's are more accessible for families and as you say even if you do have to buy some they should get some use out of them. I love the idea of having a big box of books for children to borrow/take or swap books. It is hard for a child to have a favourite character from a book if they don't have any books at home. I think a lot of the dressing up that happens in schools is more linked to characters children see on television and sometimes there is also a book for the character but the link is a little tenuous sometimes. World book day should be about celebrating books and reading books and not sure it matters what is being worn.

It is nearly that time of the year again - World book day 7th March 2024 With the wonderful offer of a book token for every child, at the heart of this celebration of reading is a mission to make reading together and reading for pleasure a habit for life. Dressing up for World Book Day has become something of a tradition over the years. For many children, getting to be someone else for the day, and maybe even see the adults around you dress up as well, is imaginative and fun. There can be lots of learning - thinking about book characters, what they look and act like, and getting creative with things that will help you to ‘become’ them. But how inclusive is dressing up for a special day? For some children and adults it can be a source of anxiety and stress. So what’s wrong with dressing up for World Book Day? For lots of reasons, there will be many staff and children who don’t like dressing up. They may find it uncomfortable or embarrassing. For neurodivergent children and adults a dressing up day may mean people being unusual because they are acting out a character, changes to routines, and confusing sensory experiences. Lots of grown-ups don’t like fancy dress parties and choose not to go. Children are also entitled to choose not to dress up – but in doing so they may then feel left out. Family life is hectic. And for some it will be more hectic than for others. Finding the time to sort a costume can be a big ask and adds to the pressure of everyday life that week. Dressing up can cost money. With supermarkets and online stores hijacking the dressing up tradition associated with World Book Day, some parents and carers may find a solution to the problem of costume sourcing by buying a ready-to-wear outfit. But many families won’t be able to do this, or don’t want to… …and often these ready-to-wear costumes are worn once and quickly grown out of, meaning they are not great environmentally either. But getting back to the reason for World Book Day in the first place, the focus on dressing up takes the focus away from books and stories and reading. It becomes all about the outfit. What are settings and schools doing instead? Some settings and schools have opted to have a Pyjama Day, with everyone coming in their PJs. The thinking being that PJs are something that most people have already, and also that they are about bedtime, which is often a time for reading a book. Or how about a visit from an author or illustrator to talk about their books or do some writing or artwork with the children? Time for reading is precious. Just a day with more time to read with children, talk about books, make books, listen to stories and experience the magic they can bring would be more than enough to celebrate World Book Day. No costumes required. Watch some wonderful people read a bit of their favourite book for you. Read a bit more about Pyjama Days here. Check out the World Book Day website. Written by Jules Mickelburgh

Mother’s Day is coming up, March 10th and in settings and schools there may be a focus on Mummies. Perhaps cards will be made, or paper flowers, and perhaps there will be lots of conversations about what our Mummies do for us and why we love them. As part of our reflective practice, we often think about why we’re doing what we’re doing. Why do we store the wooden blocks next to the small world animals? Why do we have a rolling snack time? Why do we do register time like this? Asking ‘why’ helps us to focus – is this supporting children’s learning and development, are we providing for every child, do we need to do it this way, can we do it differently (and better)? So, why do we celebrate Mother’s Day? As with so many things that we do, the answer might be ‘because we always have’. Or perhaps ‘because it helps children to learn about love and saying thank you to their Mummies who look after them’? Let’s dig a little deeper. Thinking about being loved, and loving, helps children remember they are kept in mind, they have people who care about them, and to learn ways to show their own love. For many children, this will include their Mummy. But we can, and do, support children to recognise love and kindness in others and in themselves all the time. In those small, meaningful moments in their day, when we and they can be responsive to a feeling or thought. Perhaps in one of those moments they may choose to make a card, or something else, or use their words, body language, or actions. When this experience has been prompted by the child, or led by a book you are reading together, or by a question you ask, on any day of the year, the learning will be deeper. Because for many children, Mother’s Day may be a trigger. There are so many different versions of family and so many family stories. A child may live with their single Dad or have two Daddies. There may be a child who is living with their foster family. Or a child’s Mummy may have died, or perhaps their Mummy’s Mum – their Granny – has passed away and this is a painful time for the whole family. Perhaps an older sibling is a child carer, looking after everyone in the home. Or there may not be the caring relationships at home that we would hope every child would experience, but we know do not. These are only a few of the reasons why Mother’s Day is not relevant to every child, and why it might trigger feelings, and perhaps behaviour. There are also the families at home, who might find Mother’s Day particularly challenging. I know from the experience in my own family, and that of my friends’, that the death of a child can be part of a family story. And we might not always know – for example if a baby was still born or a baby has been lost through a miscarriage. Mother’s Day can be a very sad time for Mummies. For all these reasons, and more, perhaps we can recognise that Mother’s Day doesn’t provide for and support the learning and development of every child, and that we can learn together about giving and receiving love and kindness and being grateful in so many other meaningful ways, every day. Written by Jules Mickelburgh

Me too....what are the chances of that lol

Morning Although some of you think of the 14th February as Valentines day 💗 we here at the FSF think of it as our birthday and today we are 21 🎉 So happy birthday to all of our wonderful forum friends and please feel free to use this as an excuse to eat cake.... If you are not already a member of the forum please remember membership is now free as per Steve's post last year on our 20th anniversary, see here: The FSF at 20 years old is now free! Best birthday wishes, Sue

Afternoon sunnyday I cannot believe it is Friday again!!! Where the flippin' heck do the weeks go 😵 Chilly here in Sussex 6* feels like 2* but this is warmer than it was at the beginning of the week and the sleet/hail and snow of Monday this week. I was supposed to be playing golf on Sunday but I have wimped out as the forecast for Sunday is -2* when I am supposed to tee off....that is no fun so I have arranged to go and meet those girls mad enough to play for coffee and cake afterwards....far more sensible in my opinion lol Chilly dog walk scheduled for tomorrow but wrapped up and with my audiobook in my ear I am quite looking forward to my morning stomp. I am currently listening to Dead Lions by Mick Herron (it is the 2nd book in his Slow Horses series). I am really enjoing this series and I understand that the TV series on Apple TV based on these books is excellent but I refuse to pay for another streaming service, apart from the cost I do not have enough hours in the day to watch it all 😆 I am so pleased to hear Mr S is making such good progress - never underestimate the power of good love and care, he's lucky to have you ❤️ Enjoy your Sunday lunch out and keep warm, Sue x

Oh sunnuday what lovely new, what better place to recover than home where apart from anything else you can get some good sleep without all the noise around you that you get in hospital. Nice your son is going to help you do the pickup, be nice to have someone with you to get him and all his stuff home. I hope it all goes to plan and you aren't waiting around for ages Lots of love to you all x

I have been thinking a lot about childhood recently. Children are finding ways to be children in a world that is evolving all the time. At the same time, the struggles that many children face remain the same throughout history: oppression, prejudice, violence, poverty, injustice. How do these ancient struggles and new challenges shape childhood? This post is too small a space to do anything more than ask the question. But here is a collection of words about childhood that I have gathered together. Let’s begin with a definition of childhood from UNICEF: Childhood is the time for children to be in school and at play, to grow strong and confident with the love and encouragement of their family and an extended community of caring adults. It is a precious time in which children should live free from fear, safe from violence and protected from abuse and exploitation. As such, childhood means much more than just the space between birth and the attainment of adulthood. It refers to the state and condition of a child’s life, to the quality of those years. And then we can add to that the words from The Open University’s course on Childhood and children’s rights: As you consider characteristics of children, you need to recognise that every child is unique and special in its own way. There are, however, some common characteristics of the period of childhood, which should guide you in the way you look at and work with children. Three of the most important are: dependency, vulnerability, and resilience. Jean Piaget wrote that ‘Play is the work of childhood’ and Albert Einstein said that ‘Play is the highest form of research.’ The writer and poet Lemn Sissay describes childhood as a book: Ultimately, family is a collection of stories and childhood is an introduction to that book. As you live your life you come to realise the significance of that introduction. And finally, Maria Montessori: Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future. And Friedrich Froebel: The plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all later life. By Jules Mickelburgh FSF and Tapestry Education Team

Sending love and big hugs to you and Mr S 💗

You jolly little Christmas elves have worn me down.....resistance is futile!

I know.....I am going for a lie down 🤣

Ok ..... I must be going soft in my old but go for it .... fill your Merry little Christmas stockings with talk of all things Christmas! 💗🎄🎅

Hi Came across this and I wanted to share this with you: The Woodland Trust provides a wealth of free resources to help teachers deliver engaging and memorable outdoor learning. Tree Tools for Schools Some lovely ideas for outdoor learning 🌳🍁🥾

It’s generally considered a fairly miserable event when the clocks go back at the end of October. It’s the start of a period that can often mean leaving for work in the dark and returning home to the same. This tends to coincide with a further deterioration in the weather which seems to steal any warmth that remained from the sun. Growing up, I also associated it with the end of football matches after school, until at least the end of February, which was a bitter pill to swallow (there weren’t floodlit all weather pitches in schools in those days)! The last couple of weeks, however, I have been reminded to look at things a different way. How about we flip the negative words we use around this time of year and consider the darkness in the way that a 4-year-old might – ‘magical’, ‘exciting’, ‘mysterious’ and maybe even a bit ‘scary’. Greg Bottrill talks about ‘Adventure Island’ being a ‘world of story and dream’ and the last week or two has encouraged me to think about how amazing the possibilities are when capturing the imagination of a young child. In my article ‘Spinning A Yarn’, I recommend that as adults, we try to fully engage our children in the world of storytelling, in an effort to set them up for a life full of incredible tales. I suggested a walk in the woods could be a great starting point for storytelling, but even your own street becomes a magical place after dark. If you consider it was probably early February since it was dark at 5pm, that’s a very long time ago in the life of a child in the Early Years. The novelty is not lost on them (especially as you can pretend it is later than it actually is!). In ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ there seems something magical about the family stepping out to go for a meal in the café on the High Street, as there is no more food in the house. It is a particularly amazing experience for Sophie because it is dark: ‘all the street-lights were lit, and all the cars had their lights on’. It is my birthday at the end of October and that means a curry is on the cards. Ten years ago, this curry may have taken place at 11pm on the way home from the pub, but these days I settle for a 5.30pm booking so we’re all home for ‘bedtime’. My 4-year old was in heaven this time around. He was thrilled to grab his torch and get his coat on for the outing. He shone his torch, gasped at the stars and moon, and ran and ran and ran. Since then we’ve been out for spooky Halloween walks and built our own kitchen-roll telescope to see the full moon. Both have fully captured his imagination and fuelled many conversations. To have an activity after an evening meal like this can be a very rewarding experience. If you are working in an Early Years setting, maybe you could suggest that your families seize the opportunity to banish the doom and gloom and embrace the darkness! By Stephen Kilgour, SEND Advisor

I don't see a problem here.....enjoy and chill x

I bet an experienced baker like you would not try and take a very liquid filled pie out of the pie dish with strips of parchment 😆 I felt sorry for him as the filling looked sooo yummy but pastry cracks so easily....it was torturous watching. Please note I have not used any names so hopefully no spoilers here!

🤢😆

I quite like squidgy/malleable objects as a fiddle aid so sometime fiddle with a lump of bluetack but can see you would not want that stuck all over the carpet but homemade bean bags filled with any out of date rice or dry beans you might have in the back of your cupboard small see through containers/bottles filled (and then the lids glued into place) filled with glitter or sequins or sand and some slightly larger particles/stones so they can try and shake move to separate the sand from the stones Old rubik cube swatches of different texture materials

I am a list maker. Anyone who lives or works with me knows that I write them obsessively. On post-it notes, in my diary, in little books, on scraps of paper. I think they might drive the people around me a bit crazy… I have lists of things to do: for today, in half term, to tell my work colleagues. Then there are the lists of things I want to remember: books I have read as an adult, books I read as a child and want to pass onto my children, films I love, places we have been on holiday, words I like, and in the more recent past a list of all the new words and phrases related to the pandemic (I thought this would jog my memory one day when someone much younger than me asks about it). When each of my children were born, I made lists of names we liked and their meanings. Way back, for a friend’s hen night, I made a list of pros and cons for keeping her own last name or changing to her fiancé’s (she kept her own - if you’re wondering!). When our family were deciding whether to relocate, I made a list of the pros and cons of staying or going (we stayed – thankfully as it turned out). Throughout my life, lists have helped me remember things (daily or long term) and have helped me make decisions. They comfort me, support me, make me feel ‘in control’. Some of you may know the lovely ‘first reader’ books by Arnold Lobel, originally published in the 1970s, about Frog and Toad. There is one story called A List, in which Toad writes a list of everything he will do that day: Wake up Eat Breakfast Get Dressed Go to Frog’s House Take Walk With Frog… As he does each thing, he crosses it off his list (and yes, I do that too). But then, while on said walk with Frog, a gust of wind blows the list out of Toad’s hand. ‘What will I do without my list?’ cries Toad. Frog suggests running after it, but Toad says no. Frog asks why not? ‘Because’, wailed Toad, ‘running after my list is not one of the things that I wrote on my list of things to do!’ Ahhh, the wisdom in those words. The problem with lists is that we stick to them. We rely on them. And we forget to be spontaneous, to look at what is happening right now in front of us, in this moment. There has been a lot of talk about lists in early years education recently, with the publication of the new Development Matters and the new ELGs. Educators are thinking about how we have recorded young children’s learning in the past (maybe by looking at a list of statements and, dare I say it, ticking them), and how we could do it differently. Perhaps we could all learn a lesson from Toad.

This is my final ‘coffee-break’ in a series that I have written, about getting #BackToBasics when it comes to approaches that we use to support our children’s learning. I’ve discussed the importance of a sound knowledge of child development (and doing away with ‘progress data’), the fact that we don’t sing nursery rhymes as much as we used to and the benefits of taking risks in play, with particular reference to climbing trees. This week I wanted to provoke some thought on the topic of a good old-fashioned chat! It’s never been more difficult to remain ‘present’ with our friends and families when we are spending time with them (whether that be in person or virtually, considering the current climate!). Most households have hundreds of television channels they can be watching at any given time. Our phones have become an extension of our bodies. They go everywhere with us, and with the proliferation of apps, they are constantly notifying us of something. It has to be said that we are obviously communicating more with the people we don’t actually see as regularly – even if that is to share the funny video your brother in law just sent you. But if the instant text communications come at the expense of genuine conversations with our nearest and dearest, then are they justifiable? More importantly, our youngest children are growing up in a world where their achievements are celebrated for the purpose of sharing on a group chat (how many parents these days actually miss their child’s first steps because their face is behind a phone filming them?). It is important to clarify that I am myself guilty of being that pre-occupied parent some of the time. I am trying my best to literally distance myself from my phone for significant chunks of the day because I was more and more aware of how dis-engaged I was becoming. It doesn’t help when a lot of us have access (in my case, choose to have access!) to work related emails/messaging services/social media on our personal handsets. An increase in ‘working from home’ blurs the lines further: ‘I will just respond to that email at 6pm because it means I won’t forget tomorrow, even though my 4 year old desperately wants me to finish the Lego pirate ship’. I appreciate many people have their priorities better organised! Throw in the mix instant access to news at a time when frankly it’s pretty important to hear it, sporting scorelines and highlights delivered to the palm of your hand as they happen, and weather notifications that tell you it’s going to be pouring down all day tomorrow. All of a sudden, you’ve got a pretty unhealthy situation on your hands. Back to the children who are witnessing all this. They are likely to have grown up seeing this behaviour since they arrived on the planet. It could be entirely normal to see Mummy and Daddy sit in silence as they catch up on various un-important Facebook updates of people they don’t actually like. This behaviour is becoming typical in many households. So, it is accepted by our little ones. The knock-on effects can be huge for the communicative and social development of these children. What can we do to ensure we are more ‘present’ in their lives and be able to get back to a time where it was normal to talk together in the living room (as there was nothing on the 3/4/5 channels on the TV)? Personally, I would advocate screen free time for the entire family for significant chunks of the day (easier said than done). Leaving devices in a different part of your home until an agreed time – this is particularly effective for those of us who even if a phone doesn’t light up, feel the need to look at it every 2-3 minutes! With our youngest children, this provides opportunities for creative play that everyone is truly engaged in, and from there, communication will flow. For our older children, it’s an opportunity to practice the age-old art of conversation (I appreciate this will go down like a lead balloon with teenagers across the land). Even if these scenarios aren’t realistic at the minute, the one key takeaway from this provocation should be to never forget that the behaviour and lifestyle we model is hugely important to the choices that our children will make in the future. Let’s chat more. This Coffee Break was written by our SEND Advisor Stephen Kilgour.

Working with children can provide you with great challenges and joy every day. I have met many teachers who are confident to speak in front of a hall full of children but ask them to speak in front of their peers – other teachers or their SLT, and suddenly that confidence disappears. Being in the classroom means you may see things from a different angle than your SLT do. You may also see things that are being introduced that you think will benefit your school – perhaps to do with a curriculum area, children’s wellbeing, supporting a positive learning environment, or the kind of assessment data you’re collecting. So, how can you approach your SLT so that they consider your ideas? · Make sure you have researched the idea fully and are clear in your mind what you are sharing with them and the impact it will have on the school, children, staff or the budget! · Think about why you want to suggest it. Is it just something you’ve seen on social media that you think will make a difference, or does it come from a policy change that you know is on its way and you’re thinking about in advance? · Everyone in a school is busy! Arrange a time to meet with SLT so there is a focus on what you are saying and it’s not just a passing conversation in the corridor, or just as they are about to go out to another meeting. · Before meeting with them, think about the benefits and any downfalls. Others may not share your enthusiasm for this new idea, so be prepared to help them understand where you are coming from and why you think this will be a positive change. · If appropriate, offer to run it just in your class / year group. During this time, keep SLT informed about how it’s going and, if it isn’t having the impact you were hoping for, admit this, summarise what you have learned from it, and move on. If it is going as you expected (or even better!), invite them to see it in action, and arrange another meeting to discuss next steps. If you are going to be running it in several classes, make sure the other teachers are on board too and understand fully what is being asked of them. · Be prepared with a plan to introduce it to the rest of the school if asked to. This may involve you having to speak with other teachers but keep the idea clear and explain the benefits that you found when you tried it, say what you found difficult and how you overcame those difficulties and most importantly, offer support to those who may struggle with the change. The important thing to remember when going to SLT is that they know what it’s like to be in the classroom, but they now have to think about the impact on the whole school. If you’re well prepared and help make their decision easier, you’ll certainly be on the right track to helping bring about a change in your school. By Ben Case, from the FSF education team.

Ahh that is fab news @Poppy33 So pleased you have come to a better understanding and that can only help you, her and the child moving forward 😊 Best wishes, Sue

@Poppy33 keep thinking of you and wondering how it all went....hoping that no news is good news 🙏🤞🙏