Day 490...School's Out

Day 490...

Well it's rather late in the day that I find myself writing this as time just seems to have vanished, but today was our last school day of this academic year so I can officially say 'School's Out!.

So my work day consisted of a little admin but as this was our third Open Day it was mainly spent chatting with parents, new and old. We were blown away by the generosity of our parents with lots of cards, gifts and kind words as we said goodbye to a cohort of our children...and yes there were tears!

But with the work day done and school done for another year I headed home to do a little more pre-school work! I know that contradicts what I've just said but I had a claim to process and a couple of emails to send. Although I will have some more work to do over the summer in the form of accounts and a few updates but they can wait for a day or so.

But with a fresh coffee in hand it was time to jump online with my good friend, and podcast co-host, Michelle to record another episode of our Disney Dream Girls podcast ready for releasing this coming Sunday. As always we have a great time recording but it is also chance for us to connect as friends and share what's going on in each other's lives.

I finished recording just in time to get Molly over to her kickboxing class and as is the norm at the moment she drove us there. Her driving is better than ever and you wouldn't know that you were in a car with a learner driver; just hope she can get a test date through earlier than her booked date in October!

And that was today, our last day in school and the start of the summer break and for me it is also 'tattoo eve' as guess what's happening tomorrow?!!

Take care.
xx

Day 121

Day 121...

Today was the last day of the working week and the last day of the academic year for my pre-school.

Well the day started early with a message from one of my staff to let me know that a member of her household had been sent home from work with a cough and had been advised to get a COVID test and self isolate until the results were known. So unfortunately my staff member had to remain at home and follow the guidance to isolate until she knows what the results are.

This meant we were one man down for the last day but thankfully this wasn't really a problem as we were having a very relaxed last day anyway. It was all about having fun with the children one last time before we sent the majority off to 'big school'. I managed to get a little admin work done first thing but then the rest of the day was spent with the children. My team had bought me some lovely flowers and my favourite 90% dark chocolate...not needed but very appreciated.

We have had a very strange year at pre-school and could not have imagined this time last year what we would have gone through a year later. Last October, and completely out of the blue, we were asked to vacate our old building and it really hit us hard. We were very well established in our old building, we had been there for about 17 years and had put an awful lot of time, effort and money into making it a fabulous space. We had new carpet, a recently laid artificial grass area, a pirate ship, playhouse, sensory garden and so much more and we had to give it all up; it was awful for all of us involved.

Thankfully the local Scouting & Guide association came to the rescue and offered us the use of their building. So the time between early December and late February was spent organising the move, applying for planning permission, re-registering with Ofsted (our governing body), selling lots of resources we could not take with us and modifying the equipment that we could take with us. And then a little over four weeks after having moved in we found ourselves having to close our doors for what we thought would be a few weeks due to this 'virus thing' and which turned into almost 13! Being based in a community building we could not have even opened our doors should we have wanted, or needed to, because community buildings were banned from being used under the lockdown regulations.

And then with great trepidation and a lot of 'risk assessing' we were able to re-open our doors again on the 15th June even though we were limited to how many children we could welcome back. But the great thing this week was that we were able to see the majority of those children moving onto 'big school' by hosting mini events where we invited small numbers to attend at set times, outdoors and keeping to all social distancing requirements...but it was very difficult not to give them all one last hug as we would have done normally. Hopefully our next school year will be a little more like 'normal'!!

Once home it was shower and change before grabbing a coffee and then hooking up with my good friend Michelle to record our Disney Dream Girls podcast, which was, as ever, a fun and lovely way to end the week.

So for me school is out for summer so it seemed fitting to enjoy a glass of red wine in a glass I received as a gift from one of the children leaving us this year...

And as we embark on our summer break our government have announced further relaxations of the lockdown over the coming weeks but still scientists are disagreeing with the approach and suggesting that this could all be happening too soon, too quickly. I just hope that the general public are perhaps more cautious than the powers that be or otherwise we will be keeping an eye out for a rise in cases in the next few weeks. Can't help think that a slow and steady approach would buy us a little more time to get numbers down even lower and that may mean we are in a better position should the autumn/winter second wave hit as predicted.

I for one will be adopting the slow and steady approach, so whatever you decide to do just take care, stay safe and wear a mask.

xx