Having an Ofsted inspector or N.V.Q. assessor visit your setting can be a daunting prospect for child minders and other early years practitioners.

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Here are a few of my personnel experiences:-

When my N.V.Q. assessor was visiting as part of my work to gain my N.V.Q. level 3 in early years care and education, I went into the kitchen to make her a coffee, when I returned to my playroom a 3 year old girl had removed her clothes and was in the process of removing a boys trousers! When I asked what they were doing, she replied, “We always get naked at your house.”

 

Eventually she told me that they were pretending to paddle in the sea, so I got them both dressed and suggested that they have bare feet and roll up their trouser legs

.. This actually worked in my favour as in her report my assessor wrote that I handled the situation  in a calm, professional manner.

On her next visit my assessor came with the children and I to a toddler group session ( I had  checked this with the group leader) hoping to see more evidence to ‘tick off’.

When we arrived  I was embarrassed because both of the leaders and several of the parents told my assessor how great I was and this almost looked as though I had bribed them into saying it.

During an Ofsted inspection my son arrived home, seeing that my kitchen table was full of paperwork, he asked ” Can I have my lunch?” more than once.

Later when I apologised for this, she told me that the previous day she had been to see a child minder where all the children and even the dog had misbehaved.

She asked one of my minded children what he liked to do at my house, he told her ” I like Karen to read the Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson to me.”  This impressed her.

Read how I achieved an outstanding Ofsted report here

One of the early learning goals that  the N.V.Q assessor needed to see was physical development so she asked me to set up an obstacle course in my garden for her next visit.

My  youngest son went to a small village school and the head teacher said that I could borrow the P.E equipment  during the summer holidays, she said she would rather it was used than being locked in the store cupboard for 6 weeks,

I set up stepping stones using the bean bags and also had the children throw a bean bag into a hoop laid on the lawn, we did some skipping and used a skipping rope to walk along on the floor like a balance beam; I even used my clothes airier and a bamboo cane to make an obstacle to crawl under and step over.

Read my post on developing gross motor skills here 

Hopefully  by sharing my experiences other child minders will get some inspiration.

As always questions and comments are welcome.

Until next time.

Karen

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