Parents and Carers as Partners
We believe that in order for children to receive quality care and early learning that suits their individual needs, parents and staff need to work together in close partnership. The two-way sharing of information is key to this, and this relationship needs to be built on mutual trust and understanding. It is important that we, as practitioners, are able to support parents/carers in an open and sensitive manner.
We value and appreciate your parental observations, photographs, and videos as they really do support your child’s learning journey and encourage you to send them in as often as you can. Many of your child’s important learning experiences occur away from nursery at home. Parental observations will give us important information about your child’s interests, experiences, and developmental progress which we can use alongside our observations of your child to support their learning journey.
During your child’s learning journeys with us at Keep Guard Day Nursery, they will be offered an Integrated 2-Year-Old review, this is where we as partners work with a Health Visitor and parent/carers to ensure your child is on track to reach all their learning milestones for their age as well at their height and weight. The Health Visitor linked to the Setting contacts us to discuss each child just after a child’s second birthday.
Key Person
It is important that you and the Early Years Practitioners that are working with your child work together. You will need to feel comfortable about exchanging information and discussing things that that will benefit your child. When your child starts at Keep Guard Day Nursery, they will be allocated a Key Person. This person will become your main point of contact within the setting, help your child to become settled, happy, and safe and is responsible for your child’s care, development, and learning. The Key Person for your child will take careful notes of your child’s progress and regularly observe your child exploring different areas of learning. They will share this information with you through a starting point observation, half-termly updates and through summative reports, offering you ideas to support your child’s learning at home.
Five to Thrive
At Keep Guard Day Nursery we are working alongside Bedford Borough Council to embed Five to Thrive, which are the building blocks for a healthy brain. Five to Thrive was developed by Kate Cairns Associates and it promotes positive parenting skills to help understand the things you do everyday to help your child's growing brain.
Five to Thrive complements our established practice ensuring babies and young children are offered a wide range of activities and given opportunities to develop strong relationships with their key person to ensure they are RESPONDED to, CUDDLED when needed, enjoy quiet times to RELAX, PLAY with a variety of stimulating activities and TALKED to using high quality communication. If you would like more information on Five to Thrive please ask Esther.
During your child’s time at Keep Guard Day Nursery they will have the opportunity to bring home a ‘Humpty Bag’ used to support the principles of Five to Thrive at home. Each bag contains age-appropriate activities and ideas and a diary to record Humpty’s adventures. To further support different experiences, in line with what we offer at Keep Guard Day Nursery, alongside the Humpty bags, your child may also experience some of our sensory and fine motor bags, story sacks and maths activities.
As part of our Five to Thrive offer, we run a free-of charge group each Friday morning, term time only (9:30am-11am) to celebrate the birth of new born babies within our local community. This group is designed for non-mobile babies and is ran by Esther in a different part of the Setting. The group allows new mums to come and relax with a drink in a safe space for their new born to explore different sensory experiences with monthly visits from the Family Support Worker from the Children’s Centre to offer further advice and weigh-ins. Expectant Mothers are also welcomed.
