Getting Involved

At Winterslow we view the child’s parents and family as the most important and primary educators and as you know your children best we appreciate your contributions and support when planning for your child’s development and happiness in Pre-School. There are several ways in which parents and carers can get involved in their children’s experiences of Pre-School.

The Pre-School Trustees/Management Committee

As the pre-school is a charity, it is run by a group of parent volunteers who form the committee - they are the Trustees of the charity. The current Trustees are a small friendly group of people who want to help shape the education and care of the children enrolled at the pre-school. Parents bring a fresh perspective to our meetings as they focus on the needs of the children - seeing things from a different viewpoint. Although the Trustees are responsible for the management of the pre-school, within our group there are people who take on the roles of chairperson, treasurer and secretary.

Anybody can join the committee; you just need to have some spare time and a passion to make the pre-school a very special and valuable experience for your child and other children from your local community.

The committee usually meets once every half term for about one hour (from 7.15pm) to discuss current issues and agree the policy and direction for the coming months. These meetings are relatively informal and offer an excellent opportunity to get to know other Mums and Dads with young children in the village! The Trustees are also part of our fund-raising and information events and again, getting involved with these activities is another great way of contributing something back to the local community.

To get involved, please talk to a member of staff or the current committee to find out when the next meeting is.

Parent Helper Rota

At Winterslow Pre-School we pride ourselves on favourable adult to child ratio’s. The current legal requirement states that there must be one adult to every eight children aged 3 and above in Pre-School’s and Nurseries, but at Pre-School we ensure there is always at the very most one adult to every six children aged 3 and above. Despite this, we are always looking for ways to give the children in our care more of our attention and support as they work towards their learning goals and one way we are able to do this is to invite parent helpers to come in during the week.

Parent helpers are volunteers who come along for a short amount of time to complete tasks such as reading a story to a child, helping with messy play such as painting and help prepare and clean up after snacks.

Whilst parent helpers are present our highly qualified and experienced staff are able to offer some targeted support to their key children and we can also offer more exciting activities such as walking into the woods and very messy activities.

We also believe that inviting parent helpers in is beneficial as they are able to gain an understanding of what their children are doing at Pre-School and then may be able to support their learning in these areas at home.

We also welcome parents to come in and bring along their hobbies and skills. For example, if you love to cook, sew or dance maybe you could come in and offer some special activities for the children!

If you would like to help in this way, please speak to our manager, Helen, who will be happy to show you the rota and discuss where you may fit in!