All About Me Forms
Parents are asked to complete an ‘All About Me’ form before their child starts here at Bright Stars. This form is designed to make the transition from home to a new setting as relaxed as possible, by providing us with information such as a child’s likes, dislikes and routines.
Daily Diary
Children are given a diary which we use daily. This will provide parents with important information about their child’s day, such as, how much milk they have drank, what and how much they have eaten, when they had their nappy changed, sleep times and what they have enjoyed that day. This diary will be sent home daily and will have space for parents to write their own comments.
Learning Journey
Whilst at Bright Stars children’s progress and development will be continually assessed allowing us to identify and plan for the next steps in their ‘Learning Journey’. A learning journey is a celebration of a child’s achievements and interests during the time they spend in our setting. It shows their development through carefully chosen, dated and sequenced: observations, annotated photographs, snapshots of significant achievements, quotes from the child, comments from parents and contributions from other settings the child attends.
WOW Wall
One of our many displays is our WOW wall. We use ‘WOW’ cards to help us gain a broad perspective of children’s achievements when they are not with us. We feel they are a really positive way to bind and celebrate the home-school relationship for children. WOW cards can be completed by parents, grandparents, siblings or neighbours etc as WOW moments can happen anywhere, at any time. We also welcome photographs, pictures, writing or any other evidence to support the WOW moment.
The key purpose of the WOW card is for us to obtain an understanding of children’s achievements outside childminding, so we too can celebrate these achievements with the children and their peers. The WOW cards will eventually be placed in the child’s ‘Learning Journey’ and the information we gather from them is a valuable source of evidence when completing your child’s development assessment profile. The WOW cards our parents submit will be coded under the six areas of learning as follows (We have also included some examples of WOW cards received relevant to their category):
Personal, Social & Emotional Development
‘Charlotte had her friends round to play and one had forgotten to bring a coat so she gave her one of her own coats so they could all play outside together.’
Communication, Language & Literacy
‘Matthew wrote the names of all his friends at school and he used a capital letter for each name.’
Problem-solving, reasoning and numeracy
‘Liang helped her mummy to pair all the socks. She then counted them in 2’s to 20!’
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
‘Imran told us that some of his friends celebrated Christmas because it was the birthday of Jesus. He also told us that people who believe that are called Christians.’
‘Lauren used her chalks to draw a beautiful picture of a butterfly she saw in the garden. She then used her digital camera to take a photograph of her picture and asked her daddy to print it for her.’
Physical Development
‘Ross rode his bicycle without stabilisers for the first time on Saturday. He had good control and didn’t wobble once!’
‘Zofia pulled herself up on the sofa and balanced without support’
Creative Development
‘Cian was painting a picture of his favourite dinosaur. He told me that when he mixed his blue and yellow together, bits of his dinosaur went green.’
The above examples are just to give parents some idea of how their experiences with their child are of great value to us. Please don’t ever feel that any event is not worthy of a WOW card, or doesn’t exactly fit into one of the areas of learning, because we have yet to receive one that hasn’t given us a further insight into children’s learning.
Notice Boards/Displays
We have various displays throughout the setting such as our topic wall which is updated regularly. Parents can view the displays whenever they are at our setting to see what their child has been taking part in or what topic they have been learning.