.LITERACY
TREASURES
Literacy Treasurers was a collaboration between 7 Fenland early years settings with us acting as Lead on the
project.
Stepping Stones Pre-school, Leverington
Murrow Pre-school, Murrow
Ladybirds Day Nursery, Wisbech
Parson Drove Pre-school, Parson Drove
Gorefield Pre-school, Gorefield
Wisbech St. Mary Pre-school, Wisbech St. Mary
Elm Nursery, Elm
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The overall aim of the project is to accelerate the achievement of children aged 0-6, living in areas of deprivation – with
a focus on early communication, language and literacy skills.
There were three developmental areas targeted through the Community Literacy Project and Literacy Treasures covered all of
them.
Parents: Improve parental awareness,
knowledge and confidence of their role as primary educator in supporting their child’s language and literacy development, in order to improve the home learning environment (specifically children aged
0-6).
Early Years Workforce: Increase the awareness, knowledge and confidence of the Early Years workforce in identifying and supporting communication, language and
literacy development of children.
Community/Partner
organisations: To increase the awareness, knowledge and confidence of local community and county-wide
organisations and Partners (e.g. Health Visitors, GPs, Speech and Language Therapists, Housing Officers, Midwives, children’s centre staff, library staff, Job Centre Plus, voluntary sector
organisations) in identifying and supporting children, parents/carers and wider community members, with language and literacy needs.
Our project covers all three
Development Areas across a large area of Fenland.
Literacy Treasures consisted of:
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Peeping Pebbles
With the funding we purchased two bags of medium sized pebbles from B&Q for each setting and washed and dried them ready to be painted. They were provided with acrylic paint and pens and
PVA glue. Parents were invited to decorate the stones with their children in each group and then once dry the Facebook address was added to the underside of each pebble and then sealed with PVA glue.
The pebbles were then distributed throughout the various villages with the help of parents and their children.
We were mindful of the environmental impact in each area…also being careful not to cause trip hazards and damage to lawn
mowers on village greens.
Each Parish Council were informed of our intentions.
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Each local community were invited to join in through the Facebook page which allowed us to monitor the impact of this part
of the project. Prior to the Facebook page going live we liaised with the Safeguarding team for advice since there is always the chance that somebody may abuse the page since it is open to
everyone.
Another part of our project was to be able to train multiple practitioners in the use of Early Talk Boost. The funding
allowed us to host training for the programme and for resources for each setting attending. Each group are in the process of delivering this 9-week intervention and even though it is too early for us
to be able to evaluate it accurately, each group are providing positive feedback so far.
Another part of our project was to be able to train multiple practitioners in the use of Early Talk Boost. The funding
allowed us to host training for the programme and for resources for each setting attending. Each group are in the process of delivering this 9-week intervention and even though it is too early for us
to be able to evaluate it accurately, each group are providing positive feedback so far.
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Replenishing home-based learning resources.
The project enabled us to purchase resources to replenish ‘Chattersacks’ or other home-based learning to the tune of
£200.00. Over the year’s games lose vital pieces and resources get broken; rendering them unsuitable.
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Helicopter Stories
Make Believe Arts delivered training to a large number of practitioners from the seven settings.
It was a lively, fun session that introduced us to the art of enabling children to experience pleasure from acting out
their stories with other children.
These maps encourage parents to talk to their children about interesting things whilst out walking. These might include a
thatched roof, a memorial, prominent building and such like. The possibilities are endless and parent/child interactions can only improve confidence in literacy skills.
For more information on Talking Together in Cambridgeshire follow this link
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