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Belinda Woolford has her say: Re-tendering for Neighbourhood Nursery Initiative

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Little Meadows Day Nursery‘Have Your Say’ has been introduced to enable you to tell the childcare industry about your news! We encourage you to send over your stories via our secure form and have the opportunity to create your own discussions and gain free promotion!

NAME: Belinda Woolford

SETTING NAME: Little Meadows @ The Willows LTD

BIO: I am the director of Little Meadows Day Nurseries, creche provision and Early Learning Recruitment an agency specialising in early years practitioners.
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Girls believe they are better than boys by the age of four

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Girls believe they are better than boys!Girls believe they are cleverer, better-behaved and try harder than boys at school from a very young age, new research has shown.

Such opinions are present from at least the time that girls are in their reception year, at the age of four or five, and persist throughout primary school.

Moreover, by the age of eight, boys appear to agree with their classmates, believing that girls are more likely to have what might be deemed the right qualities to do well at school. Children of both sexes also think that, in general, adults believe girls do better at school than boys.
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Top Days Nurseries help raise money for Marie Curie Cancer

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Childcare charity fundraiserThe managers of Tops Day Nurseries held a cake bake event today to raise money for the Parenta owners’ Marie Curie fundraiser.

Organised by Maria Thomas-Luker, Administration Director, Tops staff baked cakes for today’s meeting, and sold them to staff and local business to raise funds.

Nick Williams and Allan Presland aim to raise £10,000 for Marie Curie Cancer Care by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in 3 weeks time.

The pair have been vigorously training for the mammoth task, receiving plenty of support and donations in the process!

The Parenta team would like to say a big thank you to everyone at Tops for helping raise money for the Marie Curie Cancer fund! Nick said “We have worked closely with Tops for many years, but it was a lovely suprise to hear that they had gone to so much effort for us!”

Tops Day Nurseries operate eleven children’s nurseries situated throughout Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset.

You can help raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care,  Simply follow this link to donate.  Thank you in advance for your donations and support.

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Early Years: The cost of extending free childcare

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
Free Childcare entitlement

How much is free childcare costing you?

All three- and four-year-olds in England will be entitled to 15 hours of free childcare a week from 1 September. Ross Watson, CYPNow, asks what providing an extra 2.5 hours of free childcare will mean for parents and providers.

Two-and-a-half hours of free childcare a day is not enough time to get anything done, according to Belle Kaur, whose three-year-old son Jason currently attends the nursery at Fox Hollies Children’s Centre in Acocks Green, Birmingham, each morning. “It is hell doing the day-to-day essentials like shopping. He has tantrums in the car and in the shopping centres,” she says.

Like every other three and four-year-old in England, Jason is currently eligible for 12.5 hours of childcare a week under the government’s free entitlement scheme. Kaur uses her free hours over five days, paying extra for Jason to stay longer on Wednesdays and Fridays.

But from 1 September the Kaurs will be eligible for an extra 2.5 hours of childcare a week under government plans to extend the free entitlement to 15 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds. The new rules are also more flexible, allowing parents to use all their hours over a minimum of three days if they wish. Local authorities are also encouraged to work around the needs of individual families, even allowing parents to use their free childcare allowance for up to 10 hours a day.
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EYFS targets frustrating, says study

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Engagement with childrenPractitioners using the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) often find assessing children’s communication, language and literacy levels a cause of “tension and frustration”.

A study commissioned by the former Department for Children, Schools and Families and published under the current government, found that among practitioners, there was “criticism of the levels required” by the communication, language and literacy, problem solving, and reasoning and numeracy goals.

But the Practitioners’ Experience of EYFS concluded that the framework does receive high levels of support from all practitioner groups.
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Free video resource for your staff! Tips for teaching children to talk

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

We have found a handy video that maybe of use to you for sharing with your staff! Following on from this week’s story about the frustrations of EYFS targets, we would like to share a video we discovered regarding communicating with children.

Train staff how to encourage children to talk with a free video resource for early years practitioners! The video provides ten handy tips on practical approaches for encouraging communication with children.
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