Edgbaston Nursery School completed their Startwell Award in early 2001 and decided to undertake their Startwell Advanced Award.
As part of the Advanced Award, we required them to connect with their local community and be Active Azra’s and get the children’s belly buttons moving as they went out to explore the community.
Knowing your local community is important for creating a sense of belonging and connectivity. They took the children on several walks to explore and took the Startwell Physical characters with them. Exploring the local area also gave them the opportunity to make parents and children aware of what is around them from parks, shops, doctors, dentists, health centres etc. It is amazing how many people are unsure what is on their doorstep and as part of this criteria Edgbaston Nursery school decided to link it onto kindness week. They made these cute and inspirational quote cards and added Startwell characters onto them. They then delivered and left them in the local community for others to read and find. They have had lots of lovely positive feedback to them on social media from people that have found their quotes and kindness messages. It is also a great way to raise the profile of the nursery and promote Startwell. Why not try something similar and add your nursery and Startwell’ s social media details to the back. They even delivered them into a local café, and I bet if you had a care home local to you, they would love this, you could even try adding in a physical movement to try linked to the appropriate character.
They have worked hard to raise the profile of Startwell with parents by providing displays, workshops, video’s etc and whilst they admit they still have more to do to ensure staff and children know all the characters and messages they are on the right track. Startwell is about enhancing your good practice to extend it and make it stronger.
