Mouseketeer

Thanks Louby & sunny, I’m not sure I’d stop ranting if I started 🫣 I do still catch up regularly with what you’re all up to and making 😊

I all, hope every one is ok, and yes bring on the real spring, though today doesn’t look too bad here. I try and look in for a read still, but don’t want to bore you all with work stuff, I do miss when the forum was about sharing thoughts, ideas (moaning), I need to retire, everything about early years just gets more and more demanding/depressing….the (lack of) funding, the behaviour, the parents, staffing (lack of) 🤯 I’m spending the day with my funny 4 year old GS which always brightens things up. Have a good weekend all ☀️ 🤞

Hi, Hope everyone is well and not getting too flooded ….ridiculous amount of ground water here, will it ever stop? ☔️

Hi Emma If coming from another setting I check where they are with Safeguarding (role dependent) and PFA, I then expect them to already have covered or will want them to asap: Prevent FGM Introduction to Sendco (our LA offer this) Behaviour Management WellComm - yes as we use it

We got away with anything other than high’ish winds, thanks Sunnyday, I think zigzag will have been in the worst of storm? It stayed a bit to west for us before hitting across the midlands. It seemed like a long first week back, only 5 till half term 🙌

No snow but freezing 🥶 So looking forward to the Monday morning -4 degrees conversations … Me - “you must be cold, where is your coat”? parent - “they wouldn’t put it on when they got out of the car” (no of course they wouldn’t) Me - “do you have it”? parent - “I left it in the car, will they need it?” 🙇🏻‍♀️ hope you all manage to dodge the real stuff ❄️

You’re welcome, good luck with it, search Early Years curriculum Cumbria, not my county but it had useful information on creating an EY curriculum.

Hoping everyone had a happy & healthy Christmas and wishing you all the very best for 2026 x

That’s a big ask if nothing is in place already to start from 😞 We met as a team and thought about what we wanted all children to achieve in each area of learning, not just in Pre-School, but generally for life skills, using our own judgement supported by Bto5 and DMs we broke it down into what we’d expect the 2-3yrs, 3-4yrs, 4+yrs to be achieving in each area (progressive curriculum), if you have a curriculum from your previous setting for one age group could you use that help you with what you would expect chn to be achieving before and after that age group? I’d say include your team so that they ‘own’ it too, and hopefully actively promote it.

Hi Chloe Sorry it’s a late reply, congratulations on the new post. Do you know how your new setting plans already? maybe it already works, maybe not. We are also 2 to 4’s in one space, we moved to In the moment planning a few years ago, with an experienced team it was great, with a less experienced team it wasn’t working (even with training and mentoring) so we have returned to a slightly more formal way without it creating a lot of work.

Don’t get me started on banks! I was getting concerned that a new card hadn’t arrived to replace the expiring one, contacted them 2 weeks ago to be told I had to wait to report when not arrived 7 days before expiry date, it still had’t arrived so contacted them again to be told it was sent out on 26.10, they’d cancel and send another but allow 10 days, if a replacement could take 10 days to arrive why can’t it be reported 10 days prior to expiring …..not rocket science is it 🤷‍♀️

Thanks Louby, ours has been embedded for a few years now so don’t really want to drop it, an hourly rate has worked for all that time but now all this being dictated to is driving me mad, I did consider charger for once off trips/experiences as they come up but if some don’t pay we wouldn’t exclude the child but then that isn’t fair on those paying, why we can’t just be allowed to charge a top up and parents take it or leave it is beyond me, we all make decisions about where to shop, which garage to take our car to, which hair salon to visit based on value for money and what we want to pay, why should Early Years businesses be any different 🤷‍♀️

Only in that we’re asking for a ‘voluntary’ consumables charge we need to make our invoices transparent and it isn’t enough to just ask for a consumables fee, it needs to be broken down into food consumables, non-food consumables, activities, I can’t work out how to make this work for half day/full day let alone how I’m getting it onto the Tapestry invoices 🙈 sounds like you have a good week planned …enjoy

Hi there, I hope everyone is well, the road trip sounds good, the end of term is crashing in very quickly now with the usual to much to cram in, as well as sorting the invoices with this consumables nonsense ready for January …have you sorted this louby? Or don’t ‘request’ a consumable charge. Have a good weekend all ☔️