not to give a witch's tit that my childminder is completely ignoring EYFS?

[Greensleeves]

I work in a nursery school and I LIKE the EYFS in the main, I think it's great

BUT my children are being educated at school/nursery and I deliberately went for a childminder for the few hours I'm working in the afternoon because I want ds2 in particular to be able to chill out, play and enjoy a home environment.

I am getting increasingly fed up about the childminders/EYFS thing. It's robbing parents of choice. And it pisses me off.

I think it works really well in the children's centre/LA nursery school I work in, I like the spontaneity and "thought-catching" style of taking observations, it IS very child-centred in practice and our children have 2 hours per session of pure free play while the adults work round them. There's some really good well-grounded thinking in the actual document itself too. I think it's a nice gentle start to formal education, from the child's POV. BUT if I send my son to a childminder after nursery I don't want more of the same! And it's INSANE to expect a childminder to deliver a curriculum at all, never mind one that is so huge and setting-based, the teachers at our nursery work infeasibly hard to keep up with it, and they get allotted PPA hours every week specifically to stay on top of it all.

Is it a different sort of nursery - nursery school as opposed to day nursery? (Not sure I know what I'm talking about here.) My dcs are in nursery full-time but given their extreme youth I tend to think of it as childcare rather than formal education!

yes, it's a nursery school - for year 1 of the foundation stage, keyworking etc. EYFS isn't that different from the curriculum that was in place before, it's better IMO

BUT I made a choice to choose a childminder, not a nursery setting for ds2's afternoons, and I don't appreciate being robbed of my choices!

When I am feeling very politically cynical I can't help wonder why it is that childminders have to use it but nannies don't. So if you're rich enough for a nanny you have the choice but if you use childminders (usually the cheapest form of care) you don't.

quite, it's craziness

I am really thinking, we have a huge body of intelligent bolshie women here - maybe we should agitate?

Agree with what's been said already.

I do even wonder if it's such a great idea for Reception class. Ds isn't terribly happy atm because he says they don't many toys or enough time to play with them. He wants to be back in the nursery class.

my cm is following eyfs and is doing it based on what ds enjoys doing, she just records him doing a task and how it contributes to his development. she doesn't seem to find it difficult or annoying, but i think she is enjoying the professional development side of it. i can see if you were reluctant it would be a pest.

but if parents and childminders don't embrace some form of structure then i can see underground (unregulated) glorified babysitting services springing up.

but there's nothing WRONG with babysitting, glorified or otherwise. I should be able to make that choice for my own child, no?

But it's good to regulate in some areas, eg making sure they all have first aid skills, limiting the number of dcs each takes.
And if you ended up with underground unregulated ones they would slip through that net.

Surely, children should be allowed to do "nothing" after a day in school or nursery. To know that they'd hve to do even more educationnal stuff would deter me to get my DCs minded. Give the little ones a break!

I do agree with that, basic safety/competence etc, but I don't see that scrapping the EYFS for childminders necessarily means that they are all going to morph into slovenly incompetent slatterns who flick fag ash into the children's sandwiches. If they're registered they should have a ground level of suitability, surely?

No of course, sorry, my argument was meant to tend in the other direction - that keeping the EYFS means you're more likely to get the unregulated underground ones. (Bit dozy this morning, probably misunderstood what Fishie meant, apologies.)

Greensleeves - as a childminder who may be required to care for children after a nursery session I don't find any aspect of the EYFS framework to be at all detrimental to them.

It's a question of keeping the basic principles of the EYFS in mind and putting them into practice for each unique child according to their needs.

A childminder should look at the child's complete day, speak to their parents to find out what they wish for their child, and then strive to create an environment with that child's needs in mind (and that might be by offering a balance between different choices of play eg access to outside play if the child wants to be active, or the provision of a quiet, chill out area with open access to books/jigsaws). They should have confidence in how they as professionals interpret the EYFS within their practice to meet the child's needs.

The basic principles of the EYFS are all about responsive relationships and environments and their effect on nurturing each individual child's learning and development.

It absolutely isn't about - as I hear so many people complain about -'Doing the EYFS'.

gooseegg I do see what you're saying and I'm not an enemy of EYFS per se, far from it - I did say earlier that a good childminder may well be able to run it quite happily without it upsetting the children's experience - but the very fact that it's required is intimidating and driving perfectly good childminders out of the childcare market, which is a damn shame for parents who aren't looking for someone to seliver the EYFS, they're looking for someone loving and kind to look after their child.

But I do see your points too.

sorry, i didn't make my point clearly. what i mean is that if eyfs is what is on the table then not following it is likely to lead to a two-tier system of compliant cms and non-compliant, possibly unregistered people who may call themselves cms. and that is even less likely to lead to any change in the eyfs as it would be undermining those who did follow it.

it seems to be quite possible to follow eyfs without too many tears and there is certainly a lot of help available at cm network in my area.

I also chose a CM over a nursery and dd (3) does not go to preschool at all. I think my CM has a very low-key approach to EFYS. I don't think it interferes at all with anyone's play there. In fact we have the opposite problem in some ways - dd is starting to read and write and CM is very uneasy about this as OFSTED have told her she is not get involved with this. It puts her in a difficult position if dd wants to write and show her her writing. Seems barmy to me. I'm notpushing dd to write but she's so enthusiastic about it it seems a shame to dampen that or DIScourage her.

The objectives CM and I are really working hard on with dd are to do with physical, independent things.

The aspect which I can tell is really getting CM down though is the paperwork. I do wonder sometimes if she will just get so fed up with the admin side that she will pack it in I hope not!

Is it too late to nominate Greeny's fag ash comment for Quote of the Week? Hilarious!