At St. Thomas Nursery we really celebrate a “can do” attitude. We really believe with support and encouragement very young children can learn to do lots of things for themselves. We allow the children to undertake “grown up tasks”, such as food preparation, washing up, collecting their own bits and bobs and generally doing lots of things for themselves. We support them in this a great deal and spend a lot of time encouraging them to try and have a go. It doesn’t matter if they don’t achieve, but it is their willingness to have a go, which should be encouraged and embraced as the important part. Doing their coat, trying to put their shoes on, helping themselves to cups of drinks, generally doing their routine tasks quickly and independently, especially when they get a consistent reaction from everyone, is essential. We all know it is difficult in the busy rush of life to encourage children all the time to do everything, but more importantly it is maintaining the attitude that your child “Can Do” things and that parents understand that the more opportunities children have to do things for themselves, gives them a tremendous amount of pride and self-confidence.
We really do ask you to promote this too. When you are in nursery encourage them to do things for themselves, especially the little jobs when they first arrive for their sessions, such as putting lunchboxes and coats away and helping them to put heir name tag up on the board.
We really appreciate your support, understanding and co-operation with this, as it is such an integral part of development. It also goes a long way to help the transitions to school where they will have even more expectations placed on them and it will be less of a shock if we start now.
Food For Thought !
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