Birth to Three

[loulou5]

Hi,
Was wondering if anyone can give me any ideas on how to implement birth to three.

How do you do it ?
ie:- observations etc
Do any childminders do this as i've asked at my local group and none of them seem to do written observations etc.

Any ideas on how to plan, observe etc would be appreicated.

Thankyou

loulou - when you find out, could you let us all know?

Everytime I think I understand it someone pulls the carpet out from underneath me

Ask in the staff room tomorrow. Preferably, early on, when Shoshalite is in. She's good at that.

thx, will try again tomorrow!

It's so confusing- you need evidence for ofsted, but trying to get it in the correct way is hard.

perhaps an ofsted advisor/inspector could help us.
Please i know your out there!

I would imagine, that if there is an Ofsted advisor on here, they have been hiding. She'd get linched, if she came into the staff room!

good news to everybody the new eyfs comes in in sept 08 which overtakes birth to 3 and the stepping stones
there will be loads of courses coming up to prepare us for the changes look for courses running from easter 08
the eyfs is now birth to 5 and its main point is play (which is what we childminders do best) nurserys and schools are having trouble getting their heads around this concept but for us its fab
less paperwork and more play
ofsted are having theor trainning after easter and hopefully the bodies want to bring everybody together.

at the moment i do use the birth to 3 which everybody should stick with until sept 08 my observations are short and sweet and i normally conduct one a week on one child (maybe 2) so each child gets observed every 3 weeks, i just observe their play write it up and add a photo or drawing for evidence.

She could use a pseudonym or get protection form MN Towers

DMO we have 9 children and 5 staff

How many obs per child or per staff do you think we should do

We are concerned that if we divide the children up when OFSTEd visits one of us none of 'our' children might be present and therefore we wouldn't do well

But the staff are objecting to doing 9 obs per week

Any suggestions?

PS how short are your obs - we are currently doing 1 line or so plus a next step

katy when i was a nursery nurse in a pre school room there were only 2 staff and 16 children per day (some were part time) so i had 25 children to myself to write obbs on and write up a report on them at the end of the year
lots of paperwork which i mostly did in my own time at home.

example of my obbs now:
3rd july 07
x built a tower of 5 bricks and knew the colours red and yellow

5th aug 07
x now can say the colours red, yellow and blue and show a toy of that colour

one liners are fab and to the point if you read through their books you can see the progress they have made

Just thought I'd add - have started EYFS training and it is much better/simpler than we thought it would be !

So one line is good

But how many?

I suggested one per child per week (ie 9 per staff)

But maybe 3 per child per week would be better on a rolling rota

katy you have 9 children and 5 staff
you have alot of staff!

i would make a rota and have 3 staff per week doing a one liner obb per week on 3 children

that means each child gets observed every 3 weeks which is more than enough
unless each staff has a named child of which they observe

i have had my intro on the eyfs and it was great feels so much easier

someone suggested a scrap book to me with one liners by each picture.
eg; Good team work lads.taking turns on the trampoline.

Everyone work P/T (except me)

Whoops

scrap book is a great idea as you can add photos or the childrens pictures to the pages to back your obbs up

dmo they say eyfs is going to be better as it combines 0-3 + 5-8 nut hy do we have to do all this paper work? who sees it apart from the inspector once every 3 years!
I would rather play with my dc and my mindees.
i use some photos of activities on permission forms and a scrap book for new parents viewing surely thats enough.

I keep a diary for each child under 3, in that I put obs of what they have done each day (I use stickers that I write short bits on)and stick photos in, photos have text on them, from that I can plan what to do next with them,

For the over 3's I have actual written curriculum, and obs and next steps, all very detailed, but that is because I am accredited and have to.

Have to say am quite enjoying only having under 2's this year so only have half the paperwork.

how do you show observations without photos? dont wanna be paying out for all that ink and paper/getting photos developed. Can we keep the photos on PC for Ofsted to see? It's quite an expense and my ink's run out on my printer and I dont know how to put new ink in

Fruitloop i send mine off once a month to Bousprint on line, only costa about 10p a print and you dont have to have that many prints.

You can just do written ones, lik eif a child has done apainting, stick a sticker on the back with what said child did how they did it etc (not my brill idea by the way London11's,)

Photos are best tho cos it is real evidance of what you do.

I got a big book for each child, bought v bright post it notes and wrote obs on them, I then wrote them up later as I'd put the date and time on the note but not child's name (put child a,b etc so as not to get confused.)Its sounds complicated but you'll get the hang of it.

This is one of the tips I was given at the EYFS training. Hope it helps!

Helen

FL I was told at my last Safeguarding children training tht it was unwise to keep photos of minded children on the computer because lets say for instance if your computer was to be stolen these photos could be acsessedby anybody (if that makes sence?) I now keep my photos on a memory stick. (but I'm not sure what Ofsteds view would be of this).

So if you lost your memory stick....?

As I've got 2 4 year olds who both attend pre-school, does that mean I don't have to do anything?!