Summer is here, with the long break for the children and for you from the non-negotiable routines of term-time. Even if only one of the children in your care attends nursery, pre-school or primary school, everyone's days will have been organised around times of arrival and leaving, and any other related events. It can take a little while for everyone to wind down and realise you can go at a different and more relaxed pace. You can have an enjoyable summer with experiences that still support the children's learning, but without the clock-watching.
At the beginning of the summer you could chat with the children about what they would like to do and offer some suggestions yourself. Some possibilities are:
* Relaxed local trips that can be fitted around any day: taking your time in the library, going to a market that is not on your usual local route or having tea with friends.
* Making time for activities that seem to have been lost in term-time. Have the children asked, 'When can we...?' about anything that has never quite made it on to the daily schedule? It might be cooking a batch of buns, making a really good den in the garden that can stay up for days, or taking the bats and balls to the park and having as long a game as they want.
* Some trips may require fair weather, so you can be ready when the sun shines. It might be taking a picnic to your nearest open space, having the paddling pool out in the garden or making trips to a local swimming pool or lido.
Do a bit of research and then offer some ideas to children. Perhaps your local library has some special events over the summer. Do they sound interesting to the children? Offer some outings that need a bit of planning but not much, such as trips to a museum or art gallery.
Consider using public transport as part of the trip, especially if the children are usually driven around in a car. Children often enjoy an outing where the ride on a bus or train is the main point. The park or high street at the other end can be mildly interesting. It does not have to be gripping, because the main interest has been the view from the top deck of the bus or the new perspective on a familiar neighbourhood from the train window.
By all means, check out any group activities that the children may genuinely enjoy. Flexible drop-in playschemes, a spot of trampolining or an arts and crafts workshop may be enjoyable for everyone and ring the changes of what you do over the whole summer.
Towards the beginning of the summer break, you can have a 'planning meeting' with the children. Children appreciate being consulted and they will often like to be involved in some of the arrangements, so long as their duties do not get onerous.
* Ask the children what they would definitely like to do over the summer. Write down their ideas or, if there are older ones who can write, let them make some lists.
* Share some of your ideas that you have researched and, of course, later on you can all fit in something spontaneous as you move around locally. The summer plan is not rigid; it is a 'working document'!
* Children do not necessarily come up with a list of expensive treats. You can encourage ideas that are free or low-cost. If there are outings that involve substantial entrance fees, then explain that the planning will need to involve the children's parents. If need be, help the children to put more expensive outings in some order of preference, 'because we won't be able to do every single one'.
Now or later, you could make a summer planner or calendar with the children, that they could decorate. Show all the days with space to write and draw. Fill in the trips that need to happen on a particular day, perhaps because it's the morning that a children's author will visit the local library or there is a printing workshop that the children want to attend. Later you and the children can fill in what you actually did on each day and you will have a complete record that they will enjoy looking back on .
Summer can be a good time for the children to discover, or rediscover, the joys of choosing what to do and the excitement of organising a trip themselves. But be wary if you are inclined to fill up these weeks with worthy activities that you believe will be 'good for them'. Or perhaps the children's parents are keen to have them enrolled in organised activities, so that the children do not 'waste' the summer.
Children do not benefit from having their leisure time highjacked by anxious adults. None of you will have a summer that leaves happy memories, if it is filled with just as much dashing around as the rest of the year. Nor do you want to end up telling reluctant children that they 'have to go to the computer workshop', rather like you may say that everyone has to go to school.
You can support the children in your care by drawing on your professional understanding in a creative way. Explain in a friendly way to their parents, if they are anxious, all the skills that children can learn over a relaxed summer. It is allowable just to have fun! If you look back over some of the ideas that have been described, you can see that children can have a relaxed time and still learn ideas and skills. For example: * You may have had some far-ranging conversations. There may be more time for reflection, reminiscence and just chatting with the children.
* Some trips are likely to have provoked their curiosity and made them interested to find out more: to ask questions, visit again or get some reference books out of the library.
* Children may have happily practised their drawing and early writing skills on your summer planner. Perhaps they have learned how to use a camera and you all have a photographic record as well.
* You have learned to relax and so give the children more time to practise their skills of self-reliance, because you can resist the temptation to say, 'Please let me do it, we need to hurry'.
* It has been possible to let the children take their time over a project that matters to them. Perhaps they have returned again and again, with improved concentration and personal satisfaction, to a jigsaw that will not be finished in one sitting, or to a substantial collage that needed some thought.
* Some trips have needed a bit of clock-watching because of bus or train timetables. You will have used the opportunity to promote the children's understanding of clock time and simple sequencing.
Of course the summer will come to an end and clock-watching will start again in September. A week or so beforehand, you can begin to get yourselves back into more of a term-time frame of mind. Do you need to get anything ready with the children for beginning of nursery or school?
If bedtimes have slipped somewhat, then start to make the adjustments gradually so that times are not dragged back in one go. You may work with a family where the parents take over in plenty of time to do the bedtime routine, so you are being considerate of them. But don't make the readjustment earlier than necessary: enjoy the summer and help the children to enjoy it while it lasts.
LUCKY YOU
As a relaxed summer unfolds, you may find yourself becoming aware of parents' regrets that you, as the children's nanny, seem to enjoy all the special activities with their children. Having the fun as well as the responsibilities is, of course, part of being employed as a nanny. However, you can still be sensitive to the feelings of parents:
* Perhaps share with them the enthusiastic way in which their children talked about how 'I helped Mummy buy lots of new plants at the garden centre', or the family picnic that they had on the common.
* Let parents know the plans you are considering with the children for the summer days. Are there any outings that parents would definitely like to do themselves? It may not seem significant to you, but perhaps Dad has always wanted to give his children their first trip in a rowing boat. He has just been waiting until they were old enough.