Nursery Drop Off – FURTHER UPDATES
Updated Changes to Dropping Off Arrangements
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Changes to Dropping Off Arrangements – IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ
3rd time in changing our drop off arrangements and hopefully, 3rd time lucky! Thank you for your patience and support. We really mean it. 😊
From MONDAY 10th OCTOBER we would like to implement the following routine:
8.50am – 9.00am: Entry to nursery – Parents AND children together
Parents and children arrive at the MAIN RECEPTION.
A member of nursery staff will be at the office, buzzing families in securely to the building, welcoming you in. The rest of the nursery staff will be upstairs in the playroom ready to welcome parents and children.
*Please note that parents/carers must accompany their child up the stairs, and into the nursery.
The nursery doors to the 2 cloakroom areas will be unlocked.
On arrival into the nursery:
Children will hang up their jackets quickly and parents will support/shadow the children, promoting independence and good habits (e.g., if changing shoes, making sure they’re paired up and on the rack, gloves kept in pockets, floor left tidy, etc). The child and parent will then together go to their key worker for a smiley welcome, registration and choose their lunch order. 😊
Ready at 9.00am approx.:
After registration and lunch ordering, the Key Worker will then become responsible for your child and “handover/drop off” is complete! Parents and carers can leave, and boys and girls can go and play!
9.05am at the latest: Parents/Carers leave the nursery and exit down the stairs they came up
The stairs should be clear of primary classes by this time. When all parents leave, the nursery staff will lock the nursery doors. We love having parents/carers in the nursery again. However, most children settle, play and engage better once mummy or daddy go.
9.10am: Latecomers
Any late comers will be picked up from reception at 9.10am after all the primary school children are in.
Important Notes:
- PLEASE do arrive punctually. For transition and a successful start to the day, this is very important. An 8.50am arrival suits best. The nursery team are very busy. Late arrivals outwith these time periods can create preventable challenges.
- Parents/carers are responsible for their children until 9am, and staff become responsible when they record who arrives and collate lunch choices from the children.
- This will create a busier nursery – we ask you to leave cloakroom areas and move into the main nursery area quickly, so the cloakrooms do not become “blocked”.
- Please always close the nursery doors behind you. Children are curious and may want to leave to see where their friends are. We must work together to make sure our children are safe.
- More opportunities to come into nursery are coming very soon– look out for invitations to stay and play, and Peep group also!
- Please show this note/share this information to all adults who drop off the children.
- Pick up will, for now, remain at 3pm outside in the nursery garden.
- Cross your fingers; let’s hope this brings success!
If you want to find our reasoning to how we came to this – please see over
Nursery Drop Off changes – Evaluation and Reasoning
Why has this been so difficult to “get right”?
With the number of school pupils largely increasing very recently, and unexpectedly, the playground is now very busy – too busy at drop off and pick up time. I’m sure you agree that being in a busy playground is not the best start to the day for our little 3- and 4-year-olds. And so, we had attempted to make the start of the nursery day smoother for all – children, parents/carers and staff.
What have we tried?
1st – we had all classes, including nursery, lining up at 9am.
Evaluation: This was not suitable.
Noise and delays – The playground was noisy for the nursery children and not a positive start to the day. It was slow and tedious for both the nursery and older classes. It caused delays on the stairs, and delays in starting the day of learning ahead for everyone.
Impersonal – Noise and busyness meant families couldn’t be welcomed effectively.
2nd – We had nursery pupils lining up at playground at 8.50am. Children were being taken up to nursery by the staff for a 9am start. Latecomers went to the main reception for 9.15am where they were met by a staff member.
Evaluation: Despite some things getting better, this was still not yet ideal.
Noise and delays – The 8.50am lining up time eased noise in the playground. The younger children were happier on entering the building, it was quieter for Key Workers to engage with parents. The pressure on the stairs relieved – all classes could now start their days promptly!
Punctuality – 8.50am proved difficult for some families. There were a large number of families waiting outside at 9.15am. It involved children being near the busy reception area. It was hard to predict how many children would be late, and therefore deliver the right staffing for taking children safely up to nursery.
Staffing – Staff work hard to get the nursery ready for the children coming in and have paperwork, etc to complete. There is, of course, limited time in their working day to allow this. The 10 minutes daily were simply eating up too much of this time. They need to be in the nursery as far as possible.
Adjustments for children – After not having parents in their nurseries due to previous COVID restrictions, having very limited parents in gave those children the opportunity to settle and staff to fully establish routines. And having new/unfamiliar adults into nursery can disrupt and upset some of the children. Now they know the routines, etc, and they are used to having slightly more adults in the room, it’s time to increase this and fully involve you all. Which brings me to my next point…
Equity – Despite some parents coming into the setting to help their children, it wasn’t fair to the other parents.
And so, this is how we have come to make the new changes!
We really appreciate your patience in trialling these. I know they have been tricky. However, with limited stairwells and limited entrances to a growing school, we have been faced with new challenges. We very much appreciate your support and I felt I needed to explain the circumstances behind our decisions.
Thank you so very much in taking the time to read this.
Miss Forbes and the Nursery/ELC team 😊
