What is great about your nursery?

[LennyW]

I'm really struggling to fill out this term's feedback form for our nursery.

There are two questions in particular I'm finding really hard to answer:

"How could we improve our partnership with parents?" and

"What could you offer to develop our partnership?".

Obviously every nursery is different, but does your nursery do something (simple, practical, creative, innovative, obvious) to improve its partnership with you; or what do you do to develop your partnership with nursery?

(As background, DD, 3, goes to a great nursery which is part of a small chain and they are really proactive with developing relationships with parents. Only four parents have returned this term's feedback form and I really want to return it with a good idea or two to make all their effort worthwhile.

Any thoughts appreciated and I promise to come back and look at this post over the next 24 hours.

how about access to their learning journeys
or being able to contribute photos and stuff to their learning journeys
or ideas for activities to do at home
or a homelink diary to pass between parent and setting
or how about regular newsletters by email
or texts during the day to keep in touch
or a friends of nursery parent committee to organise events

Thanks purepurple - great ideas!

What do you mean by learning journeys, and how could parents access them? Do you mean, for example, that if they are learning about, say, Chinese New Year, that we could all be offered the opportunity to bring photos from home for a pinboard at nursery? (Sorry, I'm not being facetious, but I really don't know how the kids go on learning journeys at nursery).

What is a homelink diary?

Thanks again for your great ideas and it would be excellent if you could elaborate a little bit so I can understand them fully. Thanks!

at my nursery we put together like a scrapbook of the children's progress and link it to the different areas of the EYFS. We take lots of photos and write what the child is schieving.
Maybe you could send in some photos to put in it.
At other nurseries they may call hem records of achievement.
A home link diary is a little book that is passed from home to seting with little messages or stories or photos in, that links what the child does at home with what they do at setting. For example you might visit the zoo and write about it and put some photos in, or at nursery your child might enjoy eating cauliflower for the first time. It is just a way of keeping up communication.
I tend to forget that other people are not conversant in nursery-speak, sorry!

Hi - DD goes to a great nursery with plenty of interaction with parents. We have the scrapbook thing which is really nice as all the little milestones are recorded eg. "DD shared her toys with X today" accompanied with a little photo.

The other thing we had last year was a really good parents evening. I guess most nurseries do that but ours organised a guest speaker who ran a bit of an interactive/"Q&A" session with the parents to start off with. It was a good ice breaker (and the speaker got to sell her book afterwards!)

Thanks guys - these are great ideas and I'll suggest some to our nursery.

We get to take their devolpment folder home if we want...i think this is the 'learning journey'(?). It has a record of their development etc but also lots of photos so tis great to flick through. We also have 6 monthly reviews which is basically a 1/2 hr chat about how they getting on any worries etc. Also nursery staff v. chatty and v much an open door policy to manager to raise any issues or just general chat.

Also parents encouraged to come along on trips and it all makes for a very open, partnership feel to the place.

I'm not a nursery but....

I have a daily diary I encourage parents to write in
I have an EYFS folder with their observations/photos/work in & parents can view it & are invited to comment on (first parent to do this, this term made me cry she wrote such nice things)
I do a monthly newsletter/menu
I have a laptop with a slide show of the children showing on it
Parents are invited to join the children for mealtimes (either when their child is attending or on another day & they can bring their child)
We can send meals home with the child & have sent meals home for the parent
Parents with a skill/resource offer it to the setting (eg a dad with DIY, a mum with sewing skills, bring baking in, plants or time in the garden, scrap paper from the office)

I'll have a think if there are any more

It might not work in a nursery but I trade childcare for services I need (eg DIY/dressmaking/cleaning)

Parents also have sheets they can record event in the children's lives (eg visits to a zoo, a new food/word/ability, a new pet, an adventure) on & they get added to the childrens EYFS folder

Thanks KatyMac - love the "offer resource" idea.