How can you promote speech and language skills to children aged from birth to four years old and their parents in a fun and informal way? This has been part of the challenge of our roles as community nursery nurse and speech and language therapist based at Sure Start Cauldwell in Bedford.
As with other programmes, our centre is working towards targets set by the Sure Start Unit aimed at helping children to flourish when they start school. One of our objectives is 'to improve children's ability to learn, in particular by encouraging high-quality environments and childcare that promote early learning, provide stimulating and enjoyable play, improve language skills and ensure early identification of children with special needs.'
With this in mind, Tot Stars was born!
Tot Stars is a baby and toddler rhyme time, introduced, just as we said, as an informal way to promote speech and language skills to children aged from birth to four years old and their parents.
Tot Stars helps this to happen because rhymes and songs are so good for encouraging language and essential early communication skills such as looking, listening, anticipation and turn taking. The group also encourages social interaction and confidence building and gives parents essential support. It takes a holistic view of the child, promoting all areas of development.
Getting going
We visited a project in Peterborough, which ran a similar group, for inspiration and then pulled ideas together for sessions of our own.
Although we know that there are 700 children aged under four years old living in our area, we were unable to obtain their details and were unable to contact each family directly. Instead, we distributed posters throughout the area to advertise the session. This meant that on the first Wednesday morning of Tot Stars back in May 2002, we had no idea what interest there would be. But it was fantastic!
That first week we had 17 children and 12 parents. Now, although numbers fluctuate, we typically expect about 20 children and 15 adults.
A typical session
A typical Tot Stars sessions runs along these lines: It's ten o'clock on a Wednesday morning, and already parents and children are arriving. One of us has a final check that the room is ready, with chairs positioned in strategic places to prevent active bodies reaching unwanted places.
As families arrive and sign the register there is a scramble for buggy space, accompanied by lots of chatting and laughter. Often children begin dancing to the tape we play in the background before the session gets started. Each week we are really excited about the number of people who have come along.
As families settle into the room we encourage everyone to sit on the floor in a circle with their children. We find this helps both the carer and the child to become involved in the group.
We point out any potential hazards, such as the doors to the busy road outside, and ask parents and carers to take care of their children. Then have a short Sure Start information update before launching into our routine.
Each week follows a regular pattern so the children become familiar with the routines. However, we do make occasional small changes to add variety and stop the sessions from becoming monotonous for parents.
We always start with the 'Hello Song' to greet each child. This helps the children to feel special and encourages them to take turns and respond when asked how they are, either verbally or non-verbally.
After this we are ready for a stretch and move around the room to some groovy music, clapping hands, stamping feet and waving arms.
We have a number of blue bags containing a special activity and accompanying song, and the children enjoy guessing which bag it will be that week.
One bag holds scarves. We might use these to dance to music, or hide parts of our body and sing 'Where is your...' before taking the scarf away suddenly. Another bag has musical instruments. We play them loudly and quietly, stamping our feet and waving our hands or creeping silently around the room.
The grand finale is always the parachute, accompanied by parachute songs.
After this, even our static hair needs to calm down and it is definitely time to have a quiet time and relax to some gentle music. This is a beautiful time as the children give their parents and carers a cuddle, lie on the floor or sway to the music.
We then give a free choice time which often involves singing the children's favourite song, 'Twinkle Twinkle' and finger rhymes before doing a goodbye song to the whole group.
A drink and a snack is provided for everyone at the end of the session and we bring out a selection of toys for the children to play with. We introduced this in the second week to help encourage parents to stay and talk, and it has worked really well.
During the session we aim to drop in tips for encouraging language skills, but when families stay behind we are available to give advice on a wider range of subjects, including child development, weaning and welfare benefits. More often than not we stay just to chat. The health visitor is also available to answer questions and provide reassurance. Often referrals are made to other professionals within Sure Start and we are able to follow up queries with an individual home visit if required.
Positive feedback
We think one of the reasons that the group has been so popular is because it has a purpose and structure at the start, so carers and parents find it easier to become involved and participate in the group. It then leads on to a less structured time at the end of the singing.
We have really enjoyed seeing relationships develop among the parents. The sessions are also a great opportunity for us to get to know parents better, allowing us to be in the privileged position of listening to their concerns and offering support or putting them in contact with other help where appropriate.
In the longer term, we aim for the group to be sustainable by being led by parents. This would enable the Tot Stars to be sustainable when Sure Start is no longer available and ensure it is community-driven. We are taking small steps toward encouraging parents to be involved now.
Confronting challenges
The group seems to appeal to everyone. We have a great-grandfather, a grandmother, dads and mums attending with their children, and we are beginning to reflect the diversity of cultures within Cauldwell, but we would like to see this even more. Thirty per cent of the families in our ward come from ethnic minority groups, mainly Bangladeshi, Indian and Italian.
Because of Tot Stars' popularity we started a new group in September last year which took the group to another area within the community, giving everyone the opportunity to attend. We hope that this will help promote multicultural involvement further, and we have already seen some success with this although it continues to be a challenge.
We have set up a cassette loan system for the whole Sure Start team to use.
Rhyme tapes can be loaned to 'hard to reach' families, perhaps with a home visit from one of us with the aim of encouraging them to attend the group.
Looking ahead
The Tot Stars project has been exciting and it is great to see it developing. We are looking forward to our families getting more involved and in the future we are hopeful that both our groups will develop to reflect the cultural diversity of our community.
Tot Stars is promoting good ideas for encouraging interaction between parents and their children. Above all, the children's communication skills and other aspects of their development are noticeably improving.
Further information
* It would be good to hear from people with similar experiences or ideas, and if you would like to visit Tot Stars it would be great to see you.
Please contact either Michele Wills or Sue Rogers on 01234 269512 or email us at: michele.wills@surestartcauldwell.co.uk.
