There are many ways to develop children’s self esteem and independence and not one of them work on their own.
Self registration is a great way to assign our pre-schoolers responsibility at the time of their arrival into our nursery. We started new Children’s self registration at Gillingham Nursery last week. We ask children to select their picture that is placed outside the room and stick it to their house. There are four houses on our “sandpit window” with a face of a nursery nurse inside it. These houses represent key person’s group.
We thought long and hard about our key person system and after talking to children and parents we realised that children are still not sure who their key person is. This system of self registration should fix it. We also have a buddy system. What it means is that if the key person is not in the setting (for what ever reason) their buddy takes over their key children. So, for example if Laura is not working on a certain day / session, Hannah is her buddy and the other way round. Also, if Kelly is not in, Stephanie is her buddy.
Key person system can be a confusing concept. If I was a three year old child, I would not quite understand why I need a special friend, everybody in the nursery should be my friend. How would a child know what a key person is or what their role is. It would really help if you, parents, could talk to your children too and explain to them that their special adult friend in the nursery is (who ever the key person is) and this is the person who is there to look after them, play with them and make sure that they are happy. They can, however, approach any adult in case they want to ask a question, want or need something.
In the past, we tried different ways of self registering – however – none of them really ticked all the boxes. We hope that this one will.
