Key Person and Your Child's Progress

• Each child has a key person who builds a close relationship with them and their parents. As soon as they meet you at the Welcome Evening, they will be getting to know you and building the bridge between preschool and home. Your key person will give you an activity to pass to your child before they attend the first Stay and Play session and will make contact before the second Stay and Play. 

• Parents complete a questionnaire about their child, including the pregnancy and birth, eating and sleeping habits, likes and dislikes, physical skills etc. This helps us to build up a picture of what your child is like and how we can help them settle at preschool. Your key person will read it and keep it in your child’s Learning Journey folder so it is readily to hand. 

• Progress Check: Within six weeks of starting preschool, your key person will give you a written progress check covering Personal Social & Emotional Development, Communication & Language Development and Physical Development. Your comments will form part of the check and the progress check is shared with the Health Visiting Team. 

• Learning Journey: Your child’s key person will build up a Learning Journey folder with your child including learning stories, assessments, drawings, notes and photos. Children are encouraged to access their Learning Journeys from the shelf, and to add photos and mark-making. Staff will look through the Learning Journey with your child and add their comments as they reflect on activities and experiences. The Learning Journey will be given to your child when they leave preschool. Your child may share it with you whenever they like and may take it home overnight occasionally. 

• Emails to Home: From time to time, your key person will send you an email with a photo and small observation of what your child has been doing that day.  The best time to observe a child is when they are very involved in an activity or experience as research shows this is when “deep level learning” (Professor F Laevers) takes place. Your key person would love to hear back from you.  You may want to add a photo from home or tell us about something that captures your child's interest at home.

• Progress appointments: You can make an appointment to see your child's key person at any time. Just fill in an appointments slip (one can be found at the bottom of the page), pop a note in our letter box, email the office or ask in person. We are always happy to discuss progress or concerns, and answer questions you may have. 

Shared Care Books: If care is being shared with another setting (eg, day care nursery or childminder), your key person will give you a notebook which can travel between the preschool, home and the other setting; or will ask for permission to keep in email contact with the other setting. This will keep information flowing between the settings and home.  Please jot down anything you think may be of help or interest, eg, a bad night’s sleep, being very excited about something, toileting successes etc.