Nursery - Parent Relationship And Involvment

[Guest]

Hi

 

This is the first time I have done this so I hope it is ok!!!!

 

I work in a Pre-school room within a private day nursery. Currently I feel that relationships between parents and the staff/nursery are lacking. I really want to get my parents invovled within the room and nursery life as a whole. We have open evenings and the annual nativity play but I feel that we need to involve parents more as they are they hold the key to all information about their child.

 

Is there anyone out there who has any ideas????

 

Thanks

 

Alison

[AnonyMouse_9650]

We are a private pre-school operating term time only so quite a few of our parents either don't work or work part time which allows us to do a couple of "Bring your grown up to School" weeks each year. Our outings are also whole group affairs with parents, grandparents or other carers bringing the children. This mix of in setting and more social outside setting involvement seems to work for us.

[AnonyMouse_1027]

it is a problem with daycare - some of my settings use post it notes (where parents write a comment and put it in a box). Staff put post its on a board with an activity like - kick leaves with your child and tell us what they said. communication books where parents and keyperson filled in. othet settings use blogs and emails

[AnonyMouse_19782]

As implied above, it does depend upon how often you see your parent/carers. We are private pre-school, most of our parents drop and pick up every day. When they have a few minutes spare or when we have something in their child's learning journey we want to show them, i.e. a WOW moment for their child, we ask them to stay back in the morning for a few minutes. We ask for parent input into the learning journeys with family photos, outings the children have been on etc. and we put this into the learning journeys too. The children's Keyperson must really approach the parents and ask for their help otherwise parents will feel they are intruding maybe, even though it is their child they want to know about. British reserved behaviour maybe.

 

We have outings, plays - mum's night outs all manner of things really. Contact books work well for some groups.

[Guest]

Hi ladies

 

Thank you for your suggestions. Its hard as we know parents are at work all day so find it hard to become involved in trips, coffee mornings etc. I am going to take your ideas on board and try to implement them within our routine.

 

I will keep you posted

 

Thanks again

 

Alison

[Guest]

From my experience of teaching a working with families module on a foundation degree I found a number of students who felt they wouldn't be able to get working parents to stay and play at the nursery. I encouraged them to make it as open as possible, basically just saying "you can stay and play anytime you want and this is why it benefits your child...." and I was really pleased at the responses they got, although perhaps not as pleased as they were. It led me to believe that sometimes parents feel they aren't supposed to stop for an hour/morning/whatever because they have chosen to go to work and send their child to nursery. By giving them the open invite the students found their take up of parent visits increasing. If nothing else I think some parents used the opportunity to do something when they felt like they needed a day off!

 

I won't say it easy and it might not work as well in other places, but I think trying a few different approaches, even if you don't think they will work, sometime bear results which are quite surprising.

[Guest]

We find this a struggle in our private nursery too, parents just dont seem to have the time, or the want, to stay and play or become more involved in their childs time at nursery. Which then also puts us on a downer at the amout of work we do which doesnt seem to get appreciated, but hey i guess thats the way it goes!

 

All i can say is that an e-mail newsletter containing a short amount of information as to what each age group has been learning about in the week and a selection of photos for parents to look at in their own time has gone down a treat with almost every parent having a positive remark to say on it!! Hope this helps