‘Working Better, Working Together’
Parents in Partnership
We regularly send out newsletters, questionnaires, and comment and suggestion forms to our parents and seek the ideas and views of our service users. Parents often find it difficult to engage in the day-to-day activities of Nursery life. Many of them are working during the hours that their child attends Nursery, whilst others have younger children or other family members to care for. Time off and holidays are precious and family time is guarded ferociously.
This year, we, as a staff decided to work especially hard to improve and increase the opportunities for our parents to share in their children’s learning experiences and outcomes. One of our new initiatives was to create a recipe book as an enterprise activity and to raise funds for towards the purchase of some new home corner furniture. Parents were asked to send in a recipe for their child’s favourite dish or cooking activity. 25 of our 30 parents of our service users responded with a contribution. We also asked our families to tell us a little about how they spend their time together, where they like to go, the games, books, toys and activities they enjoy sharing as a family. Some parents can feel insecure in their own parenting skills, not confident enough to seek ideas and suggestions and often their extended family live far away. There is of course no hard and fast rule book for parenting but, knowing that something works for other children and their families can often be that affirmation or idea that they need for an activity.
To read more and see some of the photos of our activities, please download the detailed document here.