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About Us
Parents* as Partners
What we believe...
We recognize that every child who comes to Chanctonbury Preschool is wonderfully, amazingly unique. We also recognise that every family is wonderfully unique. We may say "parents as partners" but we recognise that "parent" is often many different significant adults in a child's life.
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We use all our skills to truly get to know and understand your child: staff carefully watch, observe and engage with each child at play because it helps us to understand and support their individual well-being and development.
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We recognize that your child’s first and best teacher in life is you. So we will talk to you and listen carefully to your wishes and hopes and dreams for your child.
We record your Child's Journey through Preschool in their "Learning Journal". This allows us to capture highlights of their time with us and will help us tell you their unique story – their learning, their friends, their experiences and the activities that they have enjoyed.
Working together...
YOUR CHILD'S JOURNAL
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Your child’s Learning Journal celebrates all their experiences and the progress they make throughout their time at Chanctonbury Preschool.
The Learning Journal allows us to capture highlights of their time with us and will help us tell you their unique story – their learning, their friends, their experiences and the activities that they enjoy.
We also value and encourage parents and carers to share in their child’s learning journey at Preschool. You are very welcome to look at or take home their journal at any time, as often as you want. Please ask your child’s Key Person at any time and feel free to share their journal with wider family or other carers.
Their progress should be celebrated with everyone who is involved in their remarkable young lives!
At this age so many things happen so quickly, we will ask and encourage you to share photos, stories, events and achievements from home to add to their journals.
We also encourage you to talk with your child about their Learning Journal and feel free to add in family photographs or other things of significance for your child.
What will you find in Your Child’s Learning Journal?
Photographs – are the best way to really capture special moments and sequences of your child’s experiences, their interests and explorations.
Sometimes, we will write down exactly what your child says about the photographs, so we know your child’s point of view and is also a way to accurately record language development.
Your Child’s Creations - These could be artwork they have created or significant marks (“that’s my name”) they have made or be photos of models your child has built, or of their role-play activities. Sometimes we will add some additional notes to explain what your child did or said.
Observations - As your child completes tasks and activities, staff will observe what your child says and does. We will sometimes make notes of our observations to record information about significant moments in your child’s learning and development. We record important milestones in your child’s learning and use these to think about what and how your child is learning, their development and how best to support them further.
You might like to read about : The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
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We hope you enjoy contributing to and looking through your child’s Learning Journey.
If you have any questions, please ask a member of staff.
Thank you.
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FOCUS CHILD AND "STAY AND PLAY" MEETINGS
At Chanctonbury we have specific "Focus Children" each week. During this week we all write down what the focus child is demonstrating they can do and what interests/ learning was explored. During the interactions that are recorded we will write down the teaching and the learning that takes place. This does not mean that we are not spending time with the other children, just that we are not recording every learning moment. This gives us more time to simply be with your child. We really value working together with parents and so we will send home a letter when it is your child’s focus week, asking about your child’s interests ,any new skills or family events and what you would like us to focus on. At the end of the week we would love to arrange a ‘stay and play’ meeting for you to chat with your child’s key person.
Parents' Evening
We strive to find ways to allow all parents and carers to come along to the preschool and find out what their children are doing and how they are getting along at preschool. We appreciate that this may be difficult during the day so we have a parents evening in the summer term where we have the children's work on view and we have a video montage that we film during the year to show the range of activities that they take part in. We are always keen to hear from parents and carers of other ideas and ways that we can make it easier for them to feel fully involved in their child's time with us. Please let us know if you have any ideas...
