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 Committee

As the Pre-School is a charity, it is run by a group of parent volunteers who form the committee. Within this group there are a few members with special roles, such as a chairperson, a treasurer and a secretary, but there are also several general committee members who offer their time to help with things like fundraising events and organising special outings and exciting events for the children at Pre-School.

Anybody can join the committee; you just need to have some spare time and a passion to make 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 to discuss what they need to do but these meetings are held informally in a local pub and tend to be good fun and an excellent opportunity to get to know other Mums and Dads with young children in the village! 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!