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Planning
I currently do a quarterly summary assessment for each child along with a written plan for each child, I also anticipate doing a laminated wall chart renewed each week where I record what I have planned for that week, some of this will automatically include stuff from the child's individual plan. Is this enough?
In reality this will mean doing 1 activity from each child's plan each week (I have 5 part time children).
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That is far more than enough!
Only one written assement is required in the EYFS- the one between 2-3yrs. Any more than that is not a requirement and is putting more work on yourself. I do choose to do a termly written assessment but I am thinking of getting that down to twice a year as there is no real need for it- I like to sit with parents and talk about how their child is doing but no need to write a report.
I write a termly 'plan' per child but only list 'next steps' (3 or so per Area), how I achieve those next steps I just work out as we go along, I do not plan daily or weekly activities, we do what we fancy and follow the children's lead.
This was all absolutely fine at my inspection. They are far more interested in hearing you say what your children are enjoying and how you are supporting them in their activities that day than loads of paperwork.
If you set yourself up with such a vast load of planning and paperwork you could end up burning yourself out- it happens so many times, you hear of CMers saying the paperwork is getting too much for them- it really does not need to be like that.
But in the end, you do what suits you- we all have our own ways.
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Phew! I've been childminding 8 years and have only just found a method that makes sense. I find the assessment is an easy way of identifying what I need to support each child with, my development worker had me buy a diary and I was planning each and every day but got too bogged down trying to think of activities as we do a lot of the same groups each week and with all the children part time sometimes an activity can spread over 2 weeks. When I was planning daily it looked like some days we did nothing, when I tried to fill in each day we never got round to half the stuff.
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Ofsted have said they are not worried about how we plan - they are more concerned with how our planning impacts on the children
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