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6 reasons why I left my nursery to create Blossom

by Danielle Cropley | 17th January 2017

My name is Sara and I'm an Early Years practitioner.

As a practitioner the thing I enjoyed the most was spending time with the children. One of the biggest challenges I faced working in a nursery was that I was spending a large proportion of my time writing observations and reports as opposed to being in the classroom teaching.

There is always a feeling of guilt when you are in a classroom and give all of your attention to your children but also have to balance this with administrative requirements. 

I would often leave paperwork during the day and complete it in the evenings. I found that I would spend weekends and evenings trying catch up with paperwork, and that despite all this effort – it was difficult to stay up to date.

I decided to embark on a journey to create the best learning journey platform for nurseries, based on my experience in the classroom. I knew that whatever I created needed to be practitioner-led and attuned to the needs of the Early Years sector. 

I put together an Advisory Board of senior Early Years practitioners, managers and owners. Together, we have worked to design and develop an online platform that can really help in the classroom and improve learning outcomes. We have also built a special framework for Montessori schools, which helps practitioners link their Montessori activities to EYFS outcomes.

Here are my six top reasons for creating Blossom:​

1. Nurseries have way too much paperwork to do

Having to log all of the daily activities of my children, writing observations and completing regular reports made me feel like I was always behind with my paperwork. Most importantly, I wasn’t able to spend enough time with my children! We created Blossom to massively reduce the time spent on paperwork. 

You can log day-to-day information, observations and children’s learning quickly and easily – including linking it to different frameworks. For example the EYFS Development Matters and Characteristics of Effective Learning.

2. Cohort tracking is difficult – very difficult

This has become one of the most challenging areas for nursery managers – cohort tracking takes an average sized nursery approximately 30 hours a term. 

With Blossom’s online observation tool, data is automatically pulled together into comprehensive and easy to read reports at the click of a button. At any point, you can view different reports about the progress of groups of children. This makes Ofsted inspections a breeze!

3. Parents need to be kept informed and involved

Practitioners can’t always find the time to give a comprehensive breakdown of each child’s day to parents when they pick up and drop off their child to nursery. 

Blossom lets you do this at the click of a button; we wanted to create something which enhanced the communication between parent and practitioner and made conversations more targeted. 

Blossom’s parent communication tools mean that parents are always kept engaged with their children’s development, especially with our special ‘golden moments’ feature!

4. Safeguarding paperwork is difficult

Paper-based learning journeys take up physical space in a nursery and are more at risk of being misplaced, lost or even stolen. 

Blossom puts security at the core of everything we do, keeping your nursery setting’s data protected. Blossom has several safeguards in place to protect your nursery including encrypted passwords, access logs and full backups of data.

5. Admin costs money. A lot of money!

The cost of paper and printing is an extra overhead that nurseries can’t really afford, along with the unreliability of the printer itself. With Blossom, everything is stored in the cloud and printing is not necessary – saving you time and money.

6. Practitioners just want to teach

Sometimes it feels impossible to get everything done during the busy day. Blossom gives time back to practitioners to focus on what truly matters – the children. 

On average, Blossom saves nurseries 110 hours of practitioner time per child per year, creating a better work-life balance for everyone involved!

01923 545 200​

support@blossomeducational.com

Blossom is helping nurseries across the UK. If you would like find out more about Blossom, feel free to get in touch with our support team.