Coronavirus Wellbeing

This is our home for updates on how our pre-school will be tackling keeping our Chirpy Chicks 🐥, Happy Hatchlings 🐣, the Chirpy’s Team and our families safe as the pandemic 🦠 still affects daily life.

It’s important to get children back socialising again, and just as important for working families to regain an important element of childcare that allows them to hopefully get back to work, even if that’s working from home without tiny hands mashing keyboards or bombing into Zoom calls.

All of this will take a lot of adjustment, cleaning and vigilance like never before but we’re ready to work with our Chirpy’s families to keep everyone safe and learning as best we can 🤗🐣🐥😊

Back to Pre-school

We’ll see our Chirpy Chicks 🐥 and Happy Hatchlings 🐣 September 1st.

Guidance from lots of government and health departments have finally settled on how we’re going to get children back to school and importantly for us pre-school.

Cleaning – specialist deep cleaning is currently underway in our setting and moving forward we’ll be daily cleaning above and beyond our usual high standard just as schools will have to undertake.

Play and Learning – the daily routine will more or less be the same with some adaptions for play items that we couldn’t effectively clean being swapped out for something more suitable. Soft toys and tiny lego will be getting replaced with something that is still fun but fits the cleaning work flow.

Drop off and pick up – We’ll be using two doors at the setting to help prevent families gathering too close at drop off and pick up times by assigning a family a door to collect your child from. We’ll have guides for that coming shortly.

Show and Tell – always a fun activity but in order to minimise outside items coming into the setting we’ll have to pause brining items in for the time being. If there is a comfort item a child really needs we’ll work with your family to help manage that.

COVID-19 Symptoms – If your child is displaying symptoms they are not to come to pre-school until symptoms have passed. If a child falls ill with symptoms during their time in pre-school they will be cared for by a staff member with appropriate PPE away from the other children, and the request will go out for them to be collected as soon as possible.

Everything we’ll be putting in place ahead of opening is designed to keep the children and their extended family as safe as possible in these challenging times.

As well as keeping this section updated we’ll have a meet and greet morning on Friday 28th August to get to know new friends and see old ones after our time apart, check back here for updates and we’ll post details in our news section and on social media as well. It’ll be great to get the fun moving again and can’t wait to see you all soon. 🐣🐥😊

A helping hand for busy families ⏰🐣🐥😊

For our 2020 – 2021 term we are making a slight change to our start and finish times. With a number of families getting in touch, and that includes the Chirpy’s Team as well, having to work around new or staggered starting and finishing times at local schools for older siblings it made sense to help as best we can. We’re jumping along 15mins at the start and end of the Chirpy’s day to let everyone get to where they need to be hopefully without too much of a rush, and our Chirpy Chicks 🐥 and Happy Hatchlings 🐣 won’t miss out on time to play and learn. 😊

We’ll be opening doors to the fun at 9.15am every morning and everyone will be heading home at 12.15pm until further notice in case schooling changes in future. 🤗🐣🐥😊

With the virus still doing the rounds we’ve an instruction from the authorities to ask parents each morning to declare their child is symptom free. We’ll have a new sheet to sign every morning where the parent will state their little one is fine and ready to join the fun 🤗. We won’t be doing regular temperature checks as in children this young their temperature isn’t an accurate guide as it could be a tooth coming through or an unrelated cold. We will check it if a child falls ill during the morning to help parents and doctors make the best judgement on how to help. It’s all part of our new routines to keep the virus at bay with the help of parents 🐣🐥😊.

Helping each other stay safe

Helping prevent the spread of Coronavirus 🦠 is vital for everyone and it will take a team effort. Keeping an eye on symptoms 🤒 in ourselves and family members and self-isolating while a free test is done is one way to help 😷. Another is using the StopCOVID NI App 📱to warn us if we’ve been exposed. Details on both are available below with helpful links. 🐣🐥😊

What should I do if I think I have COVID-19?

If you have:

  • a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature); OR
  • a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual); OR
  • a loss of or change in sense of smell or taste.

Everyone you live with must stay at home. You should arrange a test for COVID-19 here. 

You can ring NHS 111 for information or advice and they will help you decide if you need to contact your GP. Calling your GP may be necessary if you have:

  • an existing health condition;
  • problems with your immune system;
  • you feel you are not coping with your symptoms.

Do not attend your GP surgery or emergency department in person before calling ahead and speaking with someone. If you have very serious symptoms or feel it is a medical emergency and you need to call an ambulance, dial 999 and inform the operator of your symptoms.

If you are uncertain you can check symptoms for yourself or someone else online at this link
https://check.covid-19.hscni.net/SymptomChecker/Introduction

StopCOVID NI is a free health service app for your mobile phone. It will help to protect each other and slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Using the app along with the existing public health measures will help us all stay safe when we meet up, socialise, work or travel.

The app tells you automatically if you’ve been near someone who tests positive.

It also tells others if you test positive, but will never know or share your identity or location.

It uses the Google and Apple interface to access Bluetooth and anonymously record other nearby phones. If a user has a positive test for COVID-19 an alert is sent to all other users. Their app then runs a probability check to determine whether there is any risk to the user, and if relevant provides advice to self-isolate. You can find out more about how the app works here.

Most people spreading the virus don’t know they have it. So the more people using the app, the more lives we save.

As we go out more, let’s all keep doing our bit.

Download ‘StopCOVID NI’ from the Google or Apple App store now to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

The app is available to anyone over the age of 18 in Northern Ireland, we are working with Children’s Commissioner and the Information Commissioner’s Office to identify a way that younger people can get consent to use it without impacting anonymity.