| Good afternoon. |
| My name's Mrs Carter |
| and I run the before and after school extended hours childcare service. |
| I hope you've had a chance to have a good look around the school and talk to staff and pupils. |
| I know that many of you are interested in using our childcare service |
| when your child joins the school, |
| and perhaps you already know something about it, |
| but for those that don't, I'll go through the main details now. |
| We offer childcare for children from the ages of four to eleven |
| both before and after school. |
| I know that many parents who work find this service invaluable. |
| You can leave your child with us safe in the knowledge that they will be extremely well cared for. |
| We are insured to provide care for up to 70 children, |
| although we rarely have this many attending at any one session. |
| I think we generally expect around 50 to 60 children for the afternoon sessions |
| and about half that number for the breakfast sessions. |
| Although we currently do have 70 children registered with us, |
| not all of these attend every day. |
| It's ten years since we began offering an extended hours service |
| and we've come a long way during that time. |
| When we first opened, we only had about 20 children attending regularly. |
| We try to keep our costs as low as we can |
| and we think we provide very good value for money. |
| For the afternoon sessions, which run from 3:30 until 6 p.m., |
| it's £7.20. |
| But if you prefer, you can pay for one hour only, |
| which costs £3.50 |
| or two hours which costs £5.70. |
| The cost of the childcare includes food and snacks. |
| They'll be given breakfast in the morning |
| and in the afternoon, a healthy snack as soon as they finish school. |
| At 5 p.m. children are given something more substantial, |
| such as pasta or a casserole. |
| Please inform us of any allergies that your child might have |
| and we'll make sure they're offered a suitable alternative. |
| As you may know, |
| the childcare service runs through the school holidays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. |
| We offer a really varied and exciting programme to keep the children entertained, |
| we don't want them to feel as if they are still at school! |
| It will also feel different |
| because they'll get the chance to make new friends with children from other schools. |
| Spaces are available for them |
| because a lot of our term-time children don't always attend during the holiday. |
| In the past, |
| parents have asked if children over the age of 11 are allowed to come with their younger brothers and sisters, |
| but I'm afraid we're unable to do this |
| because of the type of insurance we have. |
| So now let me tell you about some of the activities that your child can do during the after-school sessions. |
| As well as being able to use the playground equipment, computers and the library, |
| there is usually at least one 'special' activity that children can do each day. |
| For example, Spanish. |
| We have a specialist teacher coming in every Thursday |
| to give a basic introduction to the language through games and songs. |
| She does two sessions: |
| one for the over 8s and one for the younger children. |
| This is the only activity which we have to make an extra charge for |
| but it's well worth it. |
| Once a week the children have the opportunity to do some music. |
| We're very lucky that one of our staff is a member of a folk band. |
| On Mondays, she teaches singing and percussion to groups of children. |
| We do rely on parental support for this, |
| so if any of you sing or play an instrument |
| and would be prepared to help out at these sessions, we'd be delighted. |
| Painting continues to be one of the most popular activities. |
| To begin with we weren't keen on offering this because of the extra mess involved, |
| but children kept asking if they could do some art |
| and so we finally gave in. |
| Art is great for helping the children to relax after working hard at school all day. |
| Yoga is something that we've been meaning to introduce for some time |
| but haven't been able to find anyone available to teach it, |
| until now that is. |
| So we'll see how this goes. |
| Hopefully, children will benefit in all sorts of ways from this. |
| Cooking is another popular activity. |
| They make a different sort of cake, or pizza or bread each week. |
| Although the younger children love doing it, |
| we found that the mess was just too much, |
| so we've decided to restrict this to the over 8s, |
| as they are better able to clean up after themselves. |