Our setting and re-opening during the Pandemic

Published on by Sammishah

Hello,

How are you all?? Things keep changing and moving so fast its hard to keep up! We are officially opening to all parents tomorrow (1st June) and I am so excited to see all the little ones again, we unfortunately will not see all the children again, but the majority are back along with Amy 😊. It is going to be lovely. I have missed the house being full of children and so has Sanya! I have spent the last few weeks making a few changes to the setting and we will be free flowing a lot more than usual, we are lucky that our playroom is a conservatory that leads onto the garden.

As mentioned before, since lockdown has been enforced by the government, I have only been open to key workers, therefore my numbers have drastically reduced making it easier to implement changes to my setting to protect the children in my care and my family. It has been a strange time for us all, especially the children who are finding it strange adjusting to not seeing family members and friends. With my numbers increasing we are still going to carry on the measures we have been taking such as a doorstep policy, washing hands more often, no sand play and no toys from home. With my family and I being low risk, I am feeling positive about opening to all. All we can do is follow the guidelines and do our best by our families.

Sanya makes being a childminder so easy, she loves having friends over to play!
We’ve been walking so much during lockdown

I love being a childminder, working from home has many advantages but my favourite thing about being a childminder is how much creative freedom it allows me to have. Working with a small group of children allows me to get to know each child more and follow their interests. I started my career working with children when I started my apprenticeship in a nursery in 2008, following this I moved to different nurseries over the years and even got a chance to teach English in an international school in Mumbai. Before I moved to Shaftesbury, I was working in a reception class in London -hands down one of my favourite jobs, it was a completely different experience working in a school than in a nursery. It reignited my passion for early years and I was given a great deal more freedom to plan activities and help teach as I was working as a Higher-Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA). A lot of what I learned working in reception is implemented in my practice now. It is important the resources in my setting cover the 7 areas of learning:

  • Pesonal social and emotional developement- decision making, playing alongside others, showing interests
  • Physical developement- fine and gross motar skills, independace in self care
  • Communication and Language- imganitive play, role-playing
  • Literacy- storytelling, mark making, rhymes
  • Mathematics- counting, measuring, numbers in the environment, shapes
  • Understanding the world- loose parts play, open ended resources, technology, the environment
  • Expressive arts and design- media and material, music
I love our space ♥️
I’ve drastically reduced he amount of toys we have in these boxes, I do need to add more and then label the boxes
Our cosy book corner, I do want to add in a cuddle sofa or a teepee at some point
Lots of role-playing happens here
Our sensory corner
An activity I set up earlier this year
Our outdoor space, we have artificial grass which is amazing for outdoor play all year round
Our sand tray converts to a water tray and fits in two IKEA trays for endless sensory play ideas
Made a ball runner, I’ve actually changed the poles so they go across (sorry don’t have a picture)

There is also a lot I want to add into the setting, but I am taking my time with this as I do keep adding resources and changing things around often 😃. Each day we set up for both indoor and outdoor play and bring a lot of learning opportunities outdoors.

Currently, the setting does look a little different as we have been given new guidance to follow regarding our resources. This means no sand play as it is hard to clean and I have decided to removed soft toys but everything else remains the same. We may reduce the amout of toys we have out but as we will be playing outdoors more I may not do this. I’m just focussing on making things easier for Amy and I and not giving us more work to do regarding cleaning! We are going to focus on creating happy memeories with the little ones and having lots of fun, talking about our feelings and right now its more important that ever to focus on personal, social and emotional developement.

I look forward to resuming normality and carrying on with the job I love.

This has been my 8th blog post and I love writing them, though I am trying to be regular with them, life does get in the way. As always I love hearing your feedback and if you are returning back to work tomorrow I hope you have a great first day back!!

Love Sammi xxx

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