Parental Involvement
At Humpty Dumpty Nursery School, we encourage parents to join in with activities each afternoon as they collect their child/ren.
Our aim is that each child feels secure and comfortable with all parent members in the co-operative (a prerequisite for parents to act as substitutes in a teacher's absence).
We encourage all parents to spend either a full day or a half day together with their child/ren in the preschool each term. This gives parents a deeper insight into what happens during a normal Humpty Dumpty day and into whom children are playing with, what their interests are and how they are developing socially.
It also helps to ensure that all parents are conversant with the Humpty Dumpty routines, teaching methods, and philosophy.
Each child has a key teacher with whom parents can discuss developmental milestones. Verbal contact between parents and staff on a daily basis is important.
Individual development discussions about each child are held once per term and if there is a need for follow up meetings this is scheduled in.
We encourage parents to be well-informed of daily activities, current theme work, and evaluation by providing ready access to documentation, the blog and their own children's portfolios on the preschool app, Tyra. Parents can communicate with teachers throughout the day using the app and are also welcome to give feedback about current themes and activities, as well as to give ideas for future activities according to their children’s interests.
Substitution
As we are a parent cooperative, we require parents to substitute when necessary in cases of staff illness, to facilitate staff participation in further education and network meetings and when staff are on annual leave.
We also encourage parent participation on excursions outside the preschool and sometimes even visits with parents in their places of work, in small groups.
One of the main parental responsibilities is that of substitution coordination. We ask one parent to be responsible for setting up an on-call list for each term, and to contact on call parents if they are needed.
Social Events
Social gatherings and events are an integral part of the cooperative preschool. They help to establish a cooperative spirit among the members and in some cases are the impetus for lifelong friendships and bonds between families. Each year we usually hold a summer picnic, a birthday party for Humpty Dumpty and a Christmas Sing Along. These events are for all families and teachers.
Parents also organise events for the parent group with and without their children.
Responsibilities
We require volunteers to:
form the administrative and economic body of the nursery.
be responsible for organising substitution.
be responsible for repairs and regular maintenance of nursery premises and equipment.
to co-ordinate admissions and to distribute preschool information.
