"Inspire Workshops"

Children and parents who attend St Paul’s Nursery at the St Barnabas site on Ladypool Road have been benefiting from specially designed workshops designed to boost creativity. The ’ Inspire Workshops’, which take place once each term, are individually themed to help raise awareness on key issues through fun activities. With almost half of the children’s parents in attendance, the first session in November 2010 focused upon ‘messy play’.

Through interactive workshops, the sessions are intended to encourage speech and language development and to enhance relationships and communication between parents and children. An added bonus of the sessions has been the chance for staff to gain deeper insights into the needs and concerns of the parents.
the first session focussed on messy play.

Messy Creative Activities

In the very first inspire workshop St Paul’s – St Barnabas Nursery ran, was centred upon bonfire night and the beautiful colours we see in fireworks. All we did was give parents the materials to create a piece of work with their child, which transferred their observations and idea of bonfire night onto paper.

Parents created pieces of work on their own and with their child. The creativity flowed from the parents as well as the children, more than 50% of our parents attended this session, which was highly successful.

The reason we chose bonfire night, as a theme is that we were then able to provide resources that parents may not have at home as they can be very messy e.g. glitter, paint, glue, collage materials etc., for some parents this was their first experience of using such materials, after conversations with these parents we found that they would be more willing to provide these materials at home for their child.

Also, to let parents know we appreciated their attendance and hard work we presented them with a certificate of attendance and displayed their work in the entrance of the Nursery.

We also gave out art packs to each child at the end of the term, parents were highly appreciative and many of the children brought pieces of work back in to show us at the nursery in the new term.

Healthy Eating

In February 2011, the Inspire workshop focused on Healthy eating activities. Making the subject exciting proved to be a winner, with parents and children experimenting with ingredients to make nutritious and healthy pizzas. The pizzas were then closely followed by fresh fruit smoothies devised by the children.
Part of the reason for choosing healthy eating came about as a consequence of the Nursery’s involvement in the ‘Healthy Setting’ award scheme. This scheme works towards creating an environment where healthy eating is enjoyable. It works by training staff in early years settings and by involving children and parents in developing a food policy for the setting. Noreen Khan, St Paul’s Nursery Manager for the St Barnabas site said of the session, " I would like to say a big thank you to all of the parents who attended."

Malleable Materials

In the very last inspire workshop of the year, July 2011, we provided parents and their children with clay, this was by request of the parents in the previous workshop.

The parents were initially given ideas of the things they could make, after which they just continued to develop their own ideas. Some parents took their time to produce a real piece of art. One parent did what she knows best, in her words, “I spend so much time doing house work and its what I do the best and I’ve made a bed, tea cups a sofa and a fruit bowl”.

Many of the parents just enjoyed feeling the clay and not making anything in particular but just enjoying and sharing the experience with their child.

At the end of the session all the parents made sure they would be given their pieces of work once they were dry and did ask for them the following week.

The staff at St Barnabas are ecstatic that these workshops have been so successful and are very grateful to the parents for being so supportive.