zips and attachments

We went down to the Children & family centre this morning. The toddler with me was demonstrating a persistent interest in zips on the walk down there by unzipping the cosy toe cover and struggling to zip it up again, and again. I had only put the cosy toes on the pushchair this morning as a bit of protection from the foggy/mizzle that was falling. Well this little one is usually pointing to dogs or birds or anything that moves. But today was completely absorbed in working out how a zip works, so I thought we'd see if the Children & family centre’s Toy Library had something with zips. After scouring the catalogue the only item that I could find with zips turned out to be a frog and monkey dressed with in clothing with hook & eye fasteners, buttons, laces and a very short zip on the shoes. There were a few other bits in bobs in the bag with them but frog and monkey have been a total success and have spent the afternoon in the den with the toddler zipping and unzipping their shoes. We did go into the garden today too, the toddler wore the all-in-one suit with a long zip…….

 

When I first joined the toy library as a childminder we were allowed to have each item for up to 6 weeks, we paid slightly more as a joining fee than parents who could only borrow each item for 2 weeks. As with all things, for reasons that I can not understand, they took away the 6 week borrowing period and so now childminders must return items within 2 weeks. I really don’t understand the thinking behind this, most of our children are part-time these days, in fact if I borrow an item on a Tuesday the children have at most only 4 sessions in which to play with it before it has to be returned.

Over time some of the benefits attached to working in partnership with the Children & family centre have reduced or disappeared. For example, the notice board at this particular CFC had space for childminders to pin their business cards. Eventually that facility disappeared to be replaced by a book. Childminders were asked to write a piece about themselves and the service they offered for the book which was keep on display. Now the book was never highly visible, it sat amongst the other booklets and leaflets. But it was there. It's now been removed and parents enquiring about childcare must now phone the Family Information Service number or go online.

The beauty of the book was that it was in the very place that the local parents used, it contained information about the local registered childminders and the services they provided.

I do at times feel quite disheartened.