References: Guidelines issued on activity and screen time for babies and toddlers – Screen time for babies and toddlers: how much? | NCT
At Buttercups Nursery School, screen time is not promoted and not the first choice for supporting learning and development of children, however we recognise that the use of screens and media is helpful to support children’s learning and development in certain areas and subjects.
We live in times when children cannot escape exposure to screen media and we wish to be able to teach children how to responsibly and sensibly use their screen time. At Buttercups Nursery we wish to explain to children that there is a limit to the time we are on screens and we stop when we reach a limit on the time.
Motion pictures and screen media has also some good quality content that can support learning and other arts and crafts activities that we run at the nursery. Screen media content can support the development of children in areas of Personal, Social, Emotional Development by engaging in making friends and managing emotions, it also encourages a lot of communication and language development and helps children make conversations with their peers. Children also start to role play and enact what they watch and lead to the development of Expression and Understanding of the World.
Whilst at the same time we do not wish to spend a lot of the time with children at the nursery on screens, we recognise that some children at home do use screens and therefore at the nursery we wish for children to spend time in other activities that do not involve screen time. We therefore do not intend to use screen time at the nursery each day and in our daily routines. We only ever want to use screen media to support us in important story telling. Overall our limits that we wish to observe at the nursery are:
- Children under 2 should have no screen time. We recommend the same for home.
- Children aged 2-5 are advised no more than 1 hours of sedentary screen time in a nursery week though “less is better”. Therefore at the nursery there will be a limit of 60 minutes of screen time for a week.
We shall follow the below while using screens as a medium for activities at our nursery:
- We shall limit any screen time for the children to a limit of 15 minutes in any one session for the children.
- We will only ever watch material that is Rated G: General Audiences – All ages admitted. Nothing that would offend parents for viewing by children. This shall ensure there is no sex, nudity, drug use or strong language.
- We shall always let the parents know in advance about the content that their children would be watching at the nursery if it is not one listed below. This will give parents an opportunity to review and also be able to watch with their children at home.
- We shall always review and pre check/pre screen the content that the children would be watching and make a plan of activities around the content.
- We shall be using the following from time to time:
- Alpha Blocks
- Number Jacks
- The Gruffalo/The Gruffalo’s Child/Stickman
- BBC Teach
Parents are welcome to advise us if they do not wish for their child to engage in the screen time and we shall make every effort to engage their children in alternative activities. However, we would like to discuss the reservations and make changes to our plan to provide for an inclusive activity for children where all in a cohort are engaged and involved.
Parents are welcome and requested to discuss their views with their Keyperson, Room Leaders and the Nursery Manager.
