Staff Blog: A Letter from Lockdown

This week’s blog is from Susie Pratten, who many of you will know from Pre-School - and she has been the face of much of our hastily compiled Home Learning content, prior to furlough. Here she writes on how she has been finding life as a furloughed member of our staff.

Well - what crazy, unsettling times! Maybe you feel like you are in a strange little bubble; I know I do. 

It’s certainly been a time of acceptance and adjustment. In the Pratten household, we have settled into some kind of routine and my conviction that everyone is different and functions in different ways certainly rings true, as every family’s routine seems - quite rightly - different to another’s.

Now, let me make it clear, just because I have been a teacher for well over 20 years, it definitely does not mean that I can teach my own children! The reasons for this are numerous, to name but a few…

Firstly, they are teenagers. Need I say more?! I am apparently the most embarrassing person on earth, and any attempts at fun ways to galvanise them to work are met with sighs and weak smiles, at best! 

Also, the jump from specializing in the Early Years curriculum to the lofty heights of the secondary and A level syllabus, is proving to be a tall order for me. 

Finally, my patience level with my own children - I am afraid to say - is significantly lower than with my usual pre-school charges, with whom I can sing, dance, play, make and negotiate for hours. Of course, my boys are missing their team sports, resulting in lots of testosterone and excess energy, but my efforts to get them to join in with Joe Wicks did not go down well; “Mum, I am not bouncing around the kitchen like a kangaroo!!” 

On a serious note, I am lucky that they generally get along and are actually ‘quite nice’ so we have had very few cross words. I hope I don’t regret saying that! We have actually joined forces to prevent the dog interrupting my husbands’ numerous video calls.  He is a very sneaky dog so that is no mean feat.

Aside from trying to support my children’s education I have been doing lots of running, which has made me feel good about myself but in actuality has been a necessity due to the extreme amount of baking I have been undertaking! 

Colleagues at the Manor House are fully aware of my love of baking, but I have now taken it to another level!  I have been trying to perfect my bread making, thanks to a kind neighbour who managed to source yeast for me, and experiment with lots of different cakes.

The ‘swiss roll’ was unfortunately more of a ‘swiss fold’, I would definitely have been marked down in a ‘technical bake’, but we have found a few new family favourites, all under the guise of keeping my family fed!!

I have also reignited a love of jigsaw puzzles, much to the distress of my husband who, due to his fastidious nature, finds them far too messy!!

I had a week at home prior to the beginning of furlough, which was spent making videos for the pre-schoolers to hopefully provide some continuity, and it was something of a surprising delight.  I say surprising, because videoing myself does not come naturally and the balancing of books and stands and ordering the household “not to watch” is all rather stressful. But, telling stories and thinking of activities for them certainly does come naturally and I hope they are proving useful! 

Whatever I am doing at this moment in time, my thoughts are with your children, with whom I am so lucky to work.  I hope you are all safe and well and I look forward to when we can all meet again.

Love to you all,

Susie

Guest Blog: 5 Mindfulness Tips for Busy Parents

This week’s guest blog, is written by Hayley Saunt; teacher, mindfulness practioner, MHDC parent, all round good egg and founder of Mission: Mindfulness. If you like what you see below, please visit the website: www.missionmindfulness.co.uk

When I was invited to write a guest blog for Manor House Day Care, I did what any busy parent does in these situations; looked for a time-saving short-cut!

So I remembered my old blog and decided to revisit a previous post that will hopefully be helpful to you all during these current, strange times. There is so much I could write about how mindfulness can help us at the moment; how it can help us manage the stress and anxiety that we may understandably be feeling; how it can help us to ready our body for rest and sleep if that is something that is eluding us during ‘lockdown’; how it can help us look for the joy in the world around us when that may not always feel like an easy thing to do.

Or I could write about how mindfulness could help teens navigate their way through these tricky times without the structures of school and with the increased use of screens - juggling social media and online learning; or how to help younger children deal with their ‘big emotions’ when they may be feeling angry, worried or confused right now. All these things can be helped with mindfulness-based strategies. Mindfulness is not a panacea for solving all of our ills, but it can certainly be a helpful tool in dealing with challenging situations.

In the end I chose to revise a blog post from a couple of years ago that focuses on helping a busy parent prioritise self-care in bite-size chunks on a daily basis. It will hopefully be a reminder that if we can look after our own wellbeing during these days of ‘social distancing’, then we will be in a good position to support that of our loved ones too.

Below are some suggestions for incorporating aspects of mindfulness into a busy ‘lockdown’ day when you may be juggling home-schooling with working from home with a good dose of guilt at not being a ‘Pinterest parent’ thrown in, too.

1. Set yourself an intention about how you would like to be today. Note this is a ‘to be’ not a ‘to do’. Maybe you’d like to bring dollops of patience to your dealings with yourself and others today, maybe positivity. Perhaps you would like to try and be really kind to yourself in the next few hours and give yourself a break when things don’t quite go to plan. Intention-setting with a focus on an attitude you’d like to adopt a little more that day as opposed to writing a ‘to-do’ list can be really helpful in shaping the day ahead.

2. Kids napping or watching a bit of telly in the early afternoon if they are little? The older ones having a break from their home-learning? No conference calls scheduled for a while? Reconnect with your breath. Take a breathing space like this 3-step pause from Professor Mark Williams. It can work wonders for energy levels, clarity of mind and mood. Don’t have an electronic device to hand? Just STOP and talk yourself through the following steps:

   • S = stillness, take a moment to sit, stand or lie in stillness

   • T = tune into the breath. If this is tricky just count the ‘in’ breath and the ‘out’ breath for 3 – 5 rounds. Try and be with the full duration of each breath.

   • O = observe how you are feeling in that moment – what emotions and thoughts are around right now? Any bodily sensations?

   • P = proceed with your day hopefully feeling a little more present. If the children are with you, do these mini mindfulness practices with them too. Or do some petal breathing or finger breathing with them.

3. Go for a mindful walk and take a moment to look up and study the sky and the natural world around you. Whenever you go for your dose of daily exercise or get some fresh air in the garden give yourself a little time to really notice the colours, smells and sounds surrounding you. Comment on them if you are with others. Tune into the touch of your feet in the shoes on the floor or if you are barefoot in the garden really feel the feet on the grass. Be as attentive as possible to what is around you in that present moment. Connecting with the senses can help us get into a soothing state of mind. Try to avoid being on your phone or listening to podcasts or music at these precious times so you can be fully present.

4. If you fancy it…. eat chocolate, drink your favourite tipple but do it mindfully! Really savour the sip or mouthful of your treat at the end of a busy day. Before eating or drinking notice how it feels to hold the foodstuff or the drink in your hands, tune into how it looks, the smell and then slowly consume it really attending to the taste.

5. Finally, energy and inclination permitting make a few notes in a gratitude log. Note three or more specific things that you are thankful for from your day. It could be as simple as remembering the smile you received from your son/daughter when you helped them with something or maybe it’s the yummy dinner you were made by your other half! Keep it simple and specific.

Keep safe during these exceptional times and don’t hesitate to contact me at admin@missionmindfulness.co.uk if you would like any more help or advice. And please feel free to follow Mission: Mindfulness on social media - I’m generally a little more active on Instagram (@mission_mindful_).

I’m obviously not running face-to-face courses at the moment but have some availability for on-line sessions if you feel you would like to know more about mindfulness techniques can help you and your family.

Sending well wishes to all.

Hayley

Dealing with Coronavirus...

Manor House Day Care - What Now?

Firstly, I wanted to wish you all a Happy Easter, on behalf of eveyone at Manor House Day Care. Whilst this particular bank holiday is like no other, I hope everyone has been able to enjoy the holiday in some small way; while we may not have the freedom’s we have previously taken for granted, we have at least had the weather! I’ve been threatening to use our blogging function for almost as long as we have had the new website live, but as yet life - and more specifically, OFSTED - just seemed to get in the way. But this seems as good a time as any to make a start, and as you can imagine, it’s been a busy few weeks for Manor House Day Care.

We watched quietly as the world around us changed, first with a focus on hygeine and then more recently with the complete erosion of day-to-day life as we know it. Today the business continues in a sort of “Manor House Day Care-Lite” capacity (you may have noticed we made a small tweak to our logo to reflect this), to enable us to answer the call to care for the children of local key workers. I am proud to say that as a small entity, we are stepping forward where many of our peers have taken a huge leap back.

I wanted to take this opportunity to give you a top-down view on what’s happening inside the Manor House, and of how we are changing the business to keep the engine ticking over, while this situation resolves itself. The Government’s insistence that we should close our doors to our wider client base, but remain open for keyworkers, was one that came as something as curveball; while I’m not ashamed to say that we had one eye firmly on a complete mothballing of the entire business and what that would mean in the mid-to-long term, we are grateful for the opportunity to make a meaningful difference to the community at this time.

If we have learned anything over the past year, it’s that nobody ever regretted being over-organised, and in the past four weeks, this has afforded us ample opportuniy to pivot the business into a nimble enterprise, able to cope with the pressures and rigours that this situation has foist upon us.

We would like to thank everyone who was kind enough to respond to our request to pay fees in April, as this has given us time to take stock of the various packages available to small businesses and what funding we may or may not be able to obtain during this period. At the tail end of March when these measures were announced, there simply was not enough time to come up with a cohesive plan that would have enabled us to make any sensible concession to the families we serve, but having had this time, we should be able to do so in the near future,.

You can rest assured that we are quietly working on a plan to pass on all the relief we can to families, and that our commitment to “non-profit” over the course this period still stands. I have said to some of you privately by email that no business can function with no business coming in, and that is still the case. But we are confident we can make use of the measures available to us to make this work in the long term. By the middle of this month, we hope to have a formal response sent to everyone via email.

Staff Response

The ability to furlough some of our staff has meant that we have been make big strides towards keeping the business operational, while maintaining positions for staff when this is all said and done. This process was conducted in conjunction with the entire team, because we didn’t want to push anyone into doing something that they perhaps weren’t comfortable with. All members of staff had the opportunity to remain in a working capacity or be furloughed on a voluntary basis. Some have loved ones who would perhaps be deemed vulnerable, so the opportunity to risk reduce at this time was an attractive prospect; and conversely, we have a core of staff who wanted to stay and work in the midst of this crisis.

In the media, there is a groundswell of support not just for the key workers of the NHS, but the cleaners, delivery drivers, supermarket staff and many others who are continuing to keep the wheels turning in this country. It easy to forget that the staff who have chosen to help keep our doors open are key workers too, and I would like to place on record my personal thanks for their hard work and commitment to making this difficult time a pleasure for those families who need us now, more than ever.

They have stepped forward not only to make this time a happy, safe and fulfilling one for these families’ children, but to make sure that there is still a Manor House Day Care for everyone when this situation resolves itself. Perhaps most honourably, they have in turn taken a decision to protect the livelihoods of their colleagues, in a situation that does not come without a degree of personal risk.

You may recall that we were due to be closed for a training week over the Easter period. With the exception of the slightly more hands-on First Aid refresher course, the staff who are not on the premises have been completing their training at home, while the those in the building are also completeing said courses. The way every single member of staff has approached this situation fills me with immense pride, and we thank them all for taking such a level-headed and committed approach to a difficult decision.

Our staff turnover is relatively low, and our opinion is that we have some of the best staff you will find anywhere in the local area, and to that end we look after them as much we can - but this is being repaid in an immeasurable way at the minute; I genuinely cannot speak highly enough of each and every member of the team.

Home Learning & Social Reconnection

We have quietly been mastering the art of delivering home learning content via the website, and you may have noticed there hasn’t been anything added since the initial body of work at the end of last month. Largely, this is because we are trying to accumulate a set of work to be able to upload at regular intervals, and hope that we can begin to do this as we come through the Easter break.

When this situation first became a reality, the staff were in the early stages of planning for next term, and then had the added difficulty of trying to adapt these plans to be deliverable as online content. We are all keeping our eyes peeled for additional fun activities to help you occupy your children at home, and we will continue to add this “curated” content to the page as well.

It was clear to us that isolation and social distancing is not just something that adults struggle with, and we have been keen to try and do something to help the children interact with their friends, and hopefully, make this time a little easier for them to deal with. The Manor House Day Care Zoom account has now been created, and before long, we will be holding regular sessions for both Nursery and Pre-School children to not only catch up with one another, but hopefully involve some form of MHDC led activity, too.

At the beginning of this, we said our aim was to continue to be a valuable resource to all of you, and that commitment still stands, too; as you can imagine, the measures above have been a relatively significant amount of time to put together, especially when condensed into three weeks, but we are breaking the back of them, and will soon be able to commit more time to doing what we do best.

Thanks

I would just like to sign off by expressing our gratitude to you, our Parents and Carers, for your patience and understanding at this time - our aim is to try and be as transparent as possible at this time, and I hope we have gone some way towards doing that. How long this will go on for, is anyone’s guess. But we will continue to do everything we can to support you at home with your children in the form of Home Learning, and to stay on top of the situation to the best of our abilities. I hope you feel that this is being demonstrated so far!

We have stepped up our game on social media, and we will continue to post stories, activities and photos as time goes on. It is my hope that when the situation presents some form of resolution, we can continue to involve the children and their work in our social media efforts more - but that will be in full consulation with you as parents. For now, I would urge you all to follow us, on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram: @mnrhsedaycare is the handle for all three.

Our responsibility to you is to make sure that our doors are still open when the time comes, and that is exactly what we intend to do, by protecting the livelihood and income of our staff and ensuring the business remain solvent while we continue to care for the children of local keyworkers. So again, I thank you all for being as understanding as you have been, and I wish all of you the best in health and happiness over the weeks ahead.

Over the coming weeks, I hope to utilise this blog much more as a way of bringing the business a bit closer to you as parents and carers. Not just myself (if anything, I’d like to try and avoid it, ha!), but guest bloggers in the form of local childcare enterprises, staff - even parents - if any of you fancies writing one!? Let me know privately and I’ll explain to you how it works. The comments are on below, so at the risk of sounding like a Youtuber, please comment below (notice how I missed our the “Like and Share” bit?!). This will likely be as close to a “parent forum” as we will get for the foreseeable, so we would love to hear your feedback, thoughts, opinions; whatever! Stay safe and hopefully, we will speak soon.

Cheers,

Terry.