COVID-19: Sharing What Works in Early Years Settings
Sharing what works in our Early Years settings during the COVID-19 pandemic - a collection of ideas as a starting point for discussions with your team(s) as we start to open our settings to more children.
*We would love to add your ideas and experiences to this, so please do get in touch if you have something to share.
We know that many Early Years settings and schools across Birmingham, and the country, have remained open throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, to provide places for vulnerable children and the children of key workers.
As the sector now considers how to move to wider opening over the next weeks and months, we wanted to try to capture some of the learning from their experience, and share some ideas and thinking to support teams navigating the challenges of wider opening.
Welcoming Children Back
Communication is essential as we welcome children and families back to our Early Years settings. Share your plans so that staff, children and families know what to expect with any new ways of working. Set the tone by ensuring interactions with children, families and staff are positive, clear and confident. Make time to listen to any concerns and work together to make a plan.
Remember: you are already experts at welcoming and settling children into your settings. Talk to your team(s) about how you can use this knowledge and experience in the current situation. Ask yourselves, what is in the best interests of the child? What would make parents/carers feel more at ease?
Reducing Anxiety
It’s normal to feel anxious. Everyone is different in how they respond to stress - it’s important to be kind, patient and understanding with yourself and others as we navigate our way through this pandemic, together. Be clear about expectations that those who are unwell will not be attending - parents/carers and staff need to feel that everyone is safe.
Remember: children often respond to other’s anxiety, so be proactive in finding ways to reduce anxiety, both for yourself and the children in your care. Connections are calming and reassuring for staff, children and parents/carers, so be sure to take the time to reintroduce yourselves and give your children the support they need to (re)familiarise themselves with their new environment.
Enabling Environments
Creating enabling environments is something that we all have experience of and is probably something that we think about a lot in our day to day practice. We need to use our knowledge of what is important to ensure our new evironments maintain the elements that we know will be crucial in supporting children’s learning and development, albeit with a higher focus on hygiene and fewer physical resources than we might have had previously!
Remember: we do not want children to feel pushed away or separated, but we can use the physical environment to create spaces to encourage social distancing naturally.
Curriculum Planning
Young children learn from every experience they have, if we focus on what we believe is important for our young children to learn then we can start thinking about how we can use our interactions, along with the knowledge that we have of our children and families, and the resources that are still available to them, to create appropriate learning opportunities.
Remember: having time to reconnect and talk with friends and adults will be more important than ever for the children coming back into your care - make sure you have enabled this in your new daily routine with lots of time for child-adult conversations.
Outdoor Learning
Scientific guidance indicates that the transmission of the coronavirus is significantly lower in outdoor spaces, which is why it seems sensible to try to make as much use of our outside spaces as possible. We know that playing, learning and having fun outside is great for our well-being too!
Whilst we would usually try not to simply replicate the inside learning environment outside, this might be a time to think again about simply taking activities outside to enjoy in the fresh air.
Risks and Benefits
Working in the Early Years we are all used to undertaking risk assessments for many different areas of practice, but in this busy world of risk assessments and the focus, rightly, on potential hazards and risks, what might some of the benefits be for our children, families and staff?
Now, more than ever, creating a dynamic, ongoing risk-benefit assessment is critical in the fast-changing context we are living in!
Birmingham City Council continue to offer support with their model risk assessments for schools and early years settings; downloadable documents are available on their website.
Transitions
Research suggests that children in the Early Years have many transitions and that these often coincide with other life events i.e. a new baby in the family, the move to a new place, or, in the current climate, a change in family circumstances as a direct result of the pandemic we are currently living through.
We also know that how we handle these transitions is key to children’s development and emotional well-being.
For further guidance on Early Years transitions, be sure to check out the Birmingham Education Partnership’s 2020/21 EY Transitions booklet with a renewed focus on preparing for the wider opening of early years and childcare settings.
Sharing What Works
Every setting is unique and will need to have their own children, families, and staff in mind as they plan for reopening or wider opening.
You can download a complete PDF document of our ideas, completely free - please feel free to share.
Sharing What Works in Early Years Settings during the COVID-19 Pandemic 2020
A collection of ideas as a starting point for discussion with your team(s) as we begin to open our settings to more children.
We hope that this document will support discussion about how reopening/wider opening of the Early Years sector can be done in a way that always holds the rights of the child at the heart of any decisions, and also provides some reassurance because we know there is so much great practice already in our city-wide provision... you’ve got this!
Please do get in touch if you have ideas to share!
The Birmingham Early Years Network (BEYN) is a hub for the whole Birmingham Early Years Community, serving as a place to connect you with the services that matter. It is a place to build professional partnerships in order to develop pedagogical practice to improve educational outcomes for the young children of Birmingham. This is your space, and we welcome your contributions, comments and feedback on what we share online.
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