louby loo

To be honest it sounds worse than it actually is. We had to do a 'lock down'. simply because of a domestic situation in our town. We are in the corner of a park so an excellent place for the offender to run and hide near our outside area. No actual Danger to us. Basically we just had to close off our outdoor area and go inside for an hour or so. That said we do now discuss with the children what to do if they hear the fire bell (a hand rung thingy). Where as previously we would say 'look for an adult and they will tell you which door', we now say 'an adult will tell you what to do, we may need to sit quietly, or we may need to leave the hall'. We do practice sitting quietly. What I do find incredibly sad is - a few weeks ago we had a stall at the town show. We had a little helper about 8/9 years old,( a town councillors daughter). On our stall where a few helium balloons - one burst due to the heat...... the poor child went absolutely white, almost crying in panic saying 'what do we do, what do we do', she actually thought it was gunfire So sad that this is now how a young child's mind works.

Maybe elderly parents if you're claiming carers allowance? or another adult that needs care?

I think I'm going to go with reassessing the first week back- as will will be trying a new spreadsheet system form our LA. (if I ever actually read the 'how to' guide!) The 'returners' may have dropped a little during the summer hols etc. But then hopefully I can show a progress by half term. (as they settle back into routine etc) A tad cheeky I know- but hey the schools start them low

Thinking of you, and hoping things go positively for you. x

I tell you - the bit of flapping paper literally stuck on door works wonders.......... I think they think it's either a 'nit notice' or chicken pox alert-therefore they need to read it!

We give paper reminder DIRECTLY to parent - so they can't say they didn't get it (Please don't get me started on party invites! Parents aways seem to have the cheek to blame us when they forget about parties- saying they never received the invite - hence the important stuff given directly) We then stick a notice on the door as a reminder. We do have a small notice board that they never look at- but of bit of paper flapping on the door usually draws a lot of attention for some reason....... We have a Facebook page which I do put things on.....when I actually remember, but as most of the staff are- shall we say 'of mature years' no-one expects us to use anything as high-tec as Facebook anyway. x

The ground on our outside area is so bad we have to put rugs/carpets down out there (massive hall- so all running gross motor skills can be done indoors) It was so hot out there last week we brought the carpets in early and just laid them all on the hall floor- the children loved it.... however by the end of the session they had built a huge 'bonfire' with the rugs and were happily adding all sorts of our resources to it!

I think I read somewhere it was ok as long as staff are fully aware and have the option for normal rather than than 12 regular payments.

Den's on the whole are not too bad with us, I think that's down to my primitive need to build dens We build them a lot. We have them under tables, under trees, anywhere we can build them. 'Pop-up anything do not make it through our door...... and if someone donates one it goes straight back out the door to the charity shop. I think they must contain some kind of 'hyper gas' once they pop-up! Our problem is the conventional 'playhouse' we've never had one before, and this year someone donated one as we now have a very small outside area. I hate the thing- they climb in/out the windows, chuck everything in it, try and fix 20 children a 1metre square ...... I'm secretly hoping someone will come along one night and steal the thing.

This is really sad to hear. Sounds like the community centre place wants to run their own provision with their own rules and regulations, and are just looking for someone to fund it! Shed in garden? Not helping by suggesting things sorry

Did I just read that right? Are you closing?

Thank-you Interesting reading.

Our support works etc alway put 'visiting child' never names. We would have other information elsewhere as to which child should they ever need to be checked.

When we had a similar as 'Facebook/smoke signal type scaremongering' about our local park, we rung the police and checked directly, they were able to confirm that it was perfectly safe to go out. They explained that the issue was real- however it was a personal and not public concern therefore safe for us. Would staff member accept something like this?

I was reading a thread on FB this week discussing the 1-2-1 funding issues etc. One thing that came out was the fact that the funding actually means you can just lower your ratio (say to - 1-3/4 on a group of 3 years olds) which still enables you work more closely with the 1-2-1 child but within a small group which is actually promoting full inclusion.