Kerry’s Childcare Service

Throughout Childminding Week, we will be sharing key messages to highlight the importance of childminding in Scotland.

Childminding Week is all about raising the profile and increasing awareness of childminding – showcasing how essential childminding is to thousands of children and families across Scotland, and their communities.

Join the Childminding Week conversation, share our key messages, tag us in your posts, and get inspired to .

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I renewed my first aid training via Daisy First Aid Central Scotland last year & would totally recommend it! Kirsty is very professional in her delivery & she made it fun & engaging 😊

❓Do you work in childcare, and need a first aid qualification?

🌼Emergency Paediatric First Aid (6hrs face to face) £65

🌼Paediatric First Aid Certificate (Blended learning = 6hrs online + 6hrs face to face) £85

🌼Meets Care Inspectorate requirements

🌼Suitable for childminders, nursery staff, nannies and anyone else who works with children.

🌼Certification valid for 3 years

🌼Courses are very hands on, and kept light hearted and fun!

🌼Includes anaphylaxis training as standard

🌼Excellent feedback on Facebook/Google reviews from previous classes.

🌼CTQ Assured to ensure high quality training

🌼Each learner will have their own equipment.

🌼Places are limited, so book now to secure your place

🌼If this date doesn't suit, we can come to you - host a private course on site.

Love this ❤️

How To Help Your Baby Become A Math Genius (Or Not) - Janet Lansbury Raise your hand if you don’t want a brilliant child. Honestly. Ensuring our child’s good health, happiness, kindness and compassion may well be our highest priorities, but wouldn’t we do all in our power to have the brightest, most talented, top-of-the-class kid? Or, at least, one who doesn’...

Before we finish up for the day, we wanted to share an inspiring and fabulous comment from a parent, who can’t speak highly enough about childminding:

“Honestly couldn’t recommend [my childminder] enough for childcare. [My son] absolutely loved all the time he spent with her, and we are gutted to say our goodbyes as she’s been such a big part in [his] life during the last year.”

Speaking directly to her childminder, the parent added: “My baby turned into a toddler with your help, his speech improved massively since starting and his confidence in making friends and taking part in new experiences is amazing now.

“For anyone who has any concerns about sending their little ones to a childminder, I can honestly say it was the best decision we made.”

We think this sums up the true nature, value, and importance of childminding – and that’s why we ! 💙

The nurturing, home-based, high-quality nature of childminding, provides an excellent platform for professional childminders to support children’s individual needs and make a difference to families.

We hope you take pride in what you do, what it means to people, and the positive impact you have on children and their families.

Thank you for everything – and we’ll see you again tomorrow to !

If you’re a parent looking for high-quality childcare and would like to find out more about childminding in Scotland, please visit https://www.childminding.org/find-a-childminder.

Absolutely 🥰 works every time…

I Used The ‘Heartbeat Hug’ To Calm Tantrums — And It Still Works With My Teen I was never as patient as the father in the video, but what I’ve come to call “the heartbeat hug” has been an amazing tool for managing tantrums.

Love this, absolutely genius 😄 Kids are too easily drawn into gaming & this gives them valuable, lifelong skills…

https://www.facebook.com/100059742060475/posts/450707223597343/?d=n

Stanford psychology expert: This is the No. 1 skill parents need to teach their kids—but most don't

We love movement 🥰

https://www.730sagestreet.com/keeping-kids-healthy-active/

The importance of play 😄

Love this, so important to acknowledge their feelings…

Go to the crying child. Especially the child under 7. The wrong coloured pencil, the sand in their shoe, the book that they didn’t want to read - it is all a big deal to them.

Think about the life experiences they have had. They haven’t experienced what we have and therefore have no frame of reference for how big their problem objectively is.

Their brain is also still in the egocentric stage of development, where everything is all about them.

Plus, their prefrontal cortex isn’t anywhere near as developed as an adult’s, meaning they do not have the ability to regulate themselves, or are only just beginning to learn this.

Dismissing their feelings (e.g. “you get what you get and you don’t get upset”…) or leaving them to deal with their emotions on their own stays with them. They may not be able to explicitly recall being left to cry on their own, but it will be stored in their brain and body along with other similar experiences (in their implicit memory), and contribute to their core beliefs (schemas), perceptions, and assumptions about the world as they grow up.

Meeting a child’s feelings with shame, ridicule or punishment also puts their nervous system under stress and their brain in a more reactive state, meaning they will remain in a heightened state and be more likely to become upset or triggered again.

There is just too much research and evidence behind this for it to be ignored.⠀
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If a child is upset, go to them.

And as always - parents, teachers, anyone caring for children - you won’t get it right 100% of the time. We are all still learning and doing the best we can with the resources we have.

Love a bit of den building 🪵🛖❤️

Educational and environmental psychologists, along with educators in the field, have taken a keen interest in fort building. It’s a constant presence in early and middle childhood, the creation of places, often in plain site, and the experts agree that den, fort or secret space creation offers a host of cognitive and psychological benefits for the developing child.

“When children build new spaces for play, they create a new world to experience, and that experience creates a new world – one that runs according to different material and social rules.

What this means is that play gives children the opportunity to change their world to suit them. When children construct their own play environments, they naturally create ones that are most responsive to their needs, both at the moment and in terms of their long-term development.

The benefits to the children are clear – stronger senses of self and community, belief in one’s own abilities to construct, adapt and demolish, the chance to identify and satisfy one’s own social, material and spatial needs.”

https://cstu.io/8d7114

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KEEP YOUR DOOR OPEN

The kids have been through a lot.
Finally seeing light at the end of a two year tunnel they are now hearing talk of war.
Their minds are absorbing everything they hear and see on the news and in the playground, and if you think those worries do not run deep, you are wrong.

You see, to them the world is a shaky place.
Not to be relied upon.
Things can change overnight and this they know very well.
Bad things can happen.
It is, and has been, their reality.

So, what can we do?
We can talk.
Talk until there are no words left to be said and then when that point is reached, hug.

Keep a calm environment, make safety and love the aim of life right now.

But above all, keep your door open.

Do not berate little visitors at night.
Do not expect perfect teens with sunny dispositions and for the love of all that is reasonable, do not expect academic achievement.

This is huge to them and comes hot off the back of a traumatic and frustrating time.

They are kids.

Teachers, carers, parents…

Keep your door open.

Donna Ashworth
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785303791/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_glt_i_N03WKA1WA8KR4GTRMTG5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Art by Lucy Campbell Lucy Campbell

❤️ this…

One word that never appears enough in parenting advice is WHY?

Too much advice is focused on ways to resolve a problem (constantly asking HOW?), without actually investigating what the cause of the problem is.

The trouble with this 'quick-fix' approach to parenting problems, is that while we continue to ignore the WHY (in endless pursuit of the HOW), the problem doesn't resolve, its symptoms are just palliated. The root cause is still there, often worsening, ready to reappear as a much greater issue in the future.

We need to reframe and move away from the following:

How to sleep train a baby
How to stop toddler tantrums
How to stop whining and backchat
How to stop violent behaviour
How to get a child to go to bed more easily
How to stop sibling fighting
How to settle a child at nursery/school and cope with difficulties there

and change them to:

Why is my baby so unsettled - what is causing them to wake so often in the night?
Why is my toddler so unhappy? Why are they struggling with their emotions?
Why is my child feeling the need to answer back to me? Why do they feel they need to whine?
Why is my child behaving like this? What - or who - is triggering them?
Why is my child feeling unsettled in their bedroom? What do I need to change to make bedtime easier for them?
Why are my children fighting so much? What would help them to have a calmer relationship?
Why is my child unhappy at school/nursery? What - or who - is triggering them?

When you focus on WHY, you quickly realise that many sleep training and discipline methods gloss over the root cause, they work on a process of conditioning behaviour, yet do nothing to look for the underlying reasons of it. They don't problem solve, they problem hide.

Asking WHY, investigating the cause (which sadly, very often is just cognitive/emotion development) and resolving problems is a far more mindful - and effective - approach.

Are you worried about your little one choking on solid food?

Young children are still learning to breathe, chew and swallow in the right order.

So it’s all about making food manageable for them. Use our handy guide to take the fear out of finger food

As well as being a childminder, I’m also covering posts as a supply Support for Learning Assistant (SLA) in local schools. I’m loving the diversity & challenges it brings & think it’s so important that children feel valued & heard ☺️

Some great pointers as to why some children have difficulty communicating their needs 😊

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Love this ❤️ via .parents

Continuing to do twice weekly lateral flow testing & recording the results via the government portal. This is the latest advice for childcare services in Scotland, updated on 24 September…

https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-early-learning-and-childcare-services/pages/workforce-support/

Coronavirus (COVID-19): early learning and childcare services Non-statutory guidance to support the continued safe operation of ELC settings.

One little guy’s last day with us spent at Briarland’s Farm. After 2 years of fun, play & learning, it’s time for his next adventure at nursery! It’s never easy when they move on as they become part of the family, but we’ve hopefully created lots of happy memories for them to take with them 🥰

Had some fabulous days out by the water during the summer 💦 They all loved the bbq, especially the toasted marshmallows! 😋

A recent trip to the Wallace Monument was great fun! Lots of interactive play, hide & seek & loaaaads of steps to the top 👫🥵