Mouseketeer

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 ☔️

Hi all, hope everyone is making the most of the late sunshine ☀️ I hope your terms have started well, now we have the the new ‘inspection tool kit’ to tackle on top of all the other expectations to have in place….slightly annoyed that after years of fine tuning the “learning walk’ it’s being scrapped and no idea if we’re all going back in the pot for inspections, maybe with so many settings closing they have inspectors hanging around with nothing to do 🤷‍♀️ zigzag - huge congratulations on the arrival of your gorgeous little Grandson 💙

Thanks Louby, on the whole our lunch boxes are ok, I’m sure there will be back lash from some when we tighten up the ‘avoid’ list …..but we can only lead the horse. Like you, most of the changes I already thought were a ‘thing’ anyway, I’ll write a separate attendance policy as absences are currently covered in something else. I have been deputyless for most of last term (3rd in charge is acting) and now not returning this term which isn’t helping, they were, now aren’t so I’ve had to redo registers, rotas, move key chn etc which I really didn’t need this late on, and my dad passed away at the start of the holiday so a lot to process and do there, but thank goodness I had broken up x

Hi louby, well done on mostly sticking to the ‘work in work time’, I’ve failed dismally on that score, in fact I’ve been in for a couple of hours today redoing things I’d thought I’d finished 😫 how have you got on with the EYFS updates, most of the safeguarding requirements we already have in place, annoyed that the 2 yr SG training will add to training costs, I haven’t even started the nutritional or climate policy/plans yet, once up on a time I would never have gone back to work not having any new requirements in place, I would have liked to roll out an update nutritional policy for the start of term but doubt that will happen now and I don’t think ‘don’t put any c**p in the lunch box or we’ll have to send it home” will cut it 🤔 Best Wishes to everyone returning next week.

Hi Fm, it’s all become such a headache, we have always let funded chn use all hours we are open so no ‘artificial’ break as it’s now being referred as, I would shift your lunch time to either beginning or end of session as Erin said and hope parents don’t choose to drop off late or collect early. We are going to be affected more by the ‘must allow parents to use their funded hours only’, we follow the school times whose site we run on for safeguarding the gate is locked so we’d have to keep going back to collect late comers or early leavers at the gate, we offer a 2.5 days which is 0.5hrs to pay above 15 hrs, if they all decide they want to stick at 15 hrs that would be a big problem, I can see the only way to offer 15 hrs only is by doing 5x 3hrs am sessions that fit with our current morning session times, and hope that won’t be convenient so they keep paying the 0.5 hrs for 2.5 days 🤦‍♀️ hi and welcome to the forum Erin 😊

That’s a wrap, not the easiest school group we’ve ever had and a year of staffing problems so not sorry to see the back of it, but now have a mountain of admin to catch up on, I’m not even sure I remember what my job is anymore 🤷‍♀️ I dusted off the sewing machine when my little GDaughter arrived ….