Well another day of mostly work...what is the world coming to!
So yet more emails to respond to as parents start to reply to my email from yesterday. Parents are mixed about wanting their child to return to pre-school; some need them to because of work but others simply because they feel it's right for their children. And likewise we have parents who are happy for their child to remain at home and wait until September. I think with the lack of clarity and scientific solidarity coming from government it makes this a very tricky decision for parents especially when our neighbouring countries of Scotland and Northern Ireland have committed to no more school for this academic year.
All my staff have now been able to contribute to the risk assessment which interestingly everyone responded with almost the same questions or suggestions and all of which just meant a few minor tweaks to clarify a few points. I now have a 10 page risk assessment which means I will have new policies to write, existing policies to amend, new parental agreements to write and numerous posters to download. Think I may be busy the next few weeks!
So now we are in a waiting game to see how things progress over the next couple of weeks. Local councils are now saying that starting back on the 1st June is too soon and I have seen reports from differing science bodies that contradict each other! At the moment my pre-school is looking tentatively towards the 15th June but it will not be preschool as we know it. We will have much reduced numbers and the impact on which resources we can use is quite severe; it will definitely not be 'normal'.
It will be interesting to see as we move forward what the impact is going to be on the next academic year starting in September; how many children will be registered with us? Will parents want to be sending their very youngest to pre-school when there is no legal requirement to do so? Will we, as a sector, have new guidelines introduced meaning that the way we operate will have changed for good? Lots of unanswered questions at the moment that will more than likely have a big impact on the sector and I would imagine there will be a lot of closures for small community pre-schools and even some of the bigger nurseries if income is affected drastically. But only time will tell.
We had a walk out at lunchtime and I think our energy was expended on fighting the wind. Yesterday we had sunshine and high temperatures and today whilst the sun has remained but with more cloud and a little drop in temperature we have had a really quite ferocious wind. Our walk takes us along a constant climb initially and the higher up we got the windier it seemed and it was proper howling around us. In fact for a good portion of our walk it was difficult to talk. We still managed just over 2 miles but it did take a little longer today, around 48 minutes so I can only put that down to battling against the wind!
I have tried to move away from the laptop this afternoon, but my conscientiousness keeps letting me down as I have found myself randomly checking emails and sorting out some book-keeping bits for work - doh! I have tried though to distract myself with coffee, daft games on my phone and a bit of reading.
We have had a new set of outside lights arrive today as the set we had moved from one end of the garden to our patio area are not working. They were solar powered ones and we have tried changing batteries and leaving them off to recharge but nothing has worked and looking at the solar panel we came to the conclusion that there is a little damage to one corner that may have caused them to stop working. So jumped online a couple of days ago, ordered a new set but this time a plug-in set and despite the due delivery date being the middle of next week they arrived today! So providing the wind dies down I think it will be a job for me and Molly tomorrow to decide how we are going to hang them and where - watch this space!
Until tomorrow, take care
xx
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