Sonder Early Childhood Specialists

Recruitment (💥Recruitment Resource Pack coming May 2022 💥): One of the biggest challenges our industry is facing currently - finding quality, qualified early childhood professionals. As we recover from COVID and the lockdowns, it’s subsequent impact on our industry and the morale of our management and teams cannot be ignored and we have seen an increase in services recruiting for new members to join their team. With so many jobs available and limited applicants, this has proved a significant challenge for many services. Through a strong, transparent hiring process we have found consistent success across many services in securing applicants and eventually employees that are aligned with the services philosophy and desired expectations. This has supported services in extensive staff retention, low staff turn over and overall the operation of high quality operations. After all it is your team, the ones implementing the policies, procedures and curriculums that have the potential to make or break your service (Happy Staff = Happy Families). Unpacking each of these steps, implementing them effectively and learning how to market yourselves as a service to attract favourable candidates is absolute key! You can learn more about our approach and it’s success in our upcoming resource pack which will provide you with a step by step guide and with it you will also receive ongoing support. Keep an eye out on our social media platforms for its release. In the mean time you can contact our team at [email protected] for assistance.

Here’s a hot topic for our second instalment of regulatory myth busting - “Under the Roof Ratio”, a non compliant and out dated practice which is still used by services all across NSW! 🤭 Were you aware of these regulations and the ratio requirements?!

Catch your cough! 💪🏻😷

PARENTS 🔊: We began with questions to ask when touring an early education and care service or preschool, now here are some things to look for and why. It can be difficult to identified a quality service and we know tours can be overwhelming that’s why we are here to help you through the process. Sometimes it’s helpful to do more than one tour of a centre or ask to do a stay and play with your child (Yes you’re allowed to ask these things if they are not already offered and quality services with facilitate without hesitation). Remember knowledge is power and so is that gut feeling you get! A quality service should also have an informative and extensive enrolment/orientation process, stay tuned for that upcoming post! Do you have any questions about things to look for or things you’ve seen when touring services? Drop them below and we’ll provide you with some insight ⬇️

Following on from yesterdays post about how services can reduce the spread of infection in their setting, we thought we’d also share a fun little hand washing song that you may like to use with children in service as your encourage and role model effective hand washing hygiene practices. Fun fact 🦠: your hands attract more bacteria when wet, so ensuring you dry your hands properly after washing is essential! 🧼✋🏻

Early education and care settings are renowned for being breeding grounds for germs and subsequently illness's. Families and ECEC professionals alike all know how rapidly illness can spread through a service once exposed. Ironically enough the best way to prevent illness in service is to keep your children home when they are unwell, even the slightest bit (yes we know families, not what you wanted to hear). We often try to share the perspective that even whilst its just a runny nose or mild cough for your child, for another child it with an immune system not as resilient or developed the onset of illness could be far more severe and we see this happen all the time. In a service context however there are practices, procedures and environmental adaptations that we can implement and work in partnerships with families on that will best support a healthy and illness free learning environment!

Theorists and theories underpin so much of what we do and how we view children and their early learning and development. Have you heard of Lev Vygotsky and his theory of the Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD?

Recently we chatted about behaviour guidance and support and the topic of how managing big feelings in little people can be a tough one. Supporting children in developing a practical skill set to support the regulation of their emotions is so important. A great way to do this is through mindfulness and breath work. Here’s one practice we like to use, have you seen this before? Do you have others you’ve used and found effective? Comment below to share your experience! 😙💨

The search for a quality early childhood education and care centre is never an easy one, after all your in search of facility you can entrust your entire world with - it’s a HUGE responsibility! As parents this can leave you feeling overwhelmed and confronted. By asking the right questions, looking for the right things and always trusting your gut instincts this process can be so much easier. First impressions are important but there is so much more to a centre than its aesthetics. Knowledge is power 💪🏻

some common industry misconceptions starting with today’s topic - the quantity of observations required. Are you familiar with the specifics of Regulation 74? 🤔