Happy New Year!

A very happy new year to you all.  Hope 2012 is a happy, healthy and prosperous one for you all xxxx

Happy Christmas!

Hope you have all had a wonderful day with your family. 

Thank you for our lovely presents; we appreciate them very much, xxx

Our shoeboxes!

I've copied this from the link which Operation Christmas Child have emailed to me regarding the shoeboxes we made up:

Shoebox Destination: Bosnia



Bosnia is a predominantly Muslim country based in the Balkan Region of Eastern Europe. There are less than 700 Christians in the entire country. High unemployment and little new investment in infrastructure has left more than 25% of the population in poverty.


Shoeboxes are sent by truck to the capital Sarajevo and then distributed across the country by our in-country partners. This year, we sent 72,948 shoeboxes from the UK to Bosnia.


Below is a story from a previous year’s distribution to Bosnia…


Damira’s story


In Bosnia, many children will not receive a present during the entire year. We had the privilege of giving out shoeboxes to children with special needs. It was wonderful to watch their smiles as they opened the shoeboxes and found hidden treasures inside.


Our team visited the Drina’s Rehabilitation Centre at Fojnica where we met a little girl called Damira who was 13 years old. She had a tragic background as she was born with learning disabilities and for reasons unknown, 3 years ago her mother tried to put her on a railway line in front of a train.


Instead of being instantly killed Damira survived but now lives in this rehabilitation centre. She has no visitors so it was unlikely that she would get any Christmas presents that year, were it not for the shoeboxes. When she saw that she was to get a shoebox her face lit up and she was overjoyed with her gifts.


Our work in the region


Samaritan’s Purse doesn’t just send shoeboxes to Eastern Europe. We work with local churches to provide support to abandoned orphans in Belarus and also provide medical, emotional and spiritual care for people living with HIV and AIDS in the Ukraine who have no one to look after them

Week beginning 19th December is week 3

Snow!!!!!

Huge flakes of snow falling right now!  We've just been outside to have a look, then watched through the window.

The children want to make a snowman later so keep fingers crossed for lots more snow!

Christmas biscuits

Yum!

They will be coming home tonight along with all the other Christmas creations.

Book bags

Please make sure you send your child's book bag all week as they will be taking home some Christmas creations on Thursday or Friday.

Labels

If you remember, please could you label your child's wipes and as many clothes as possible, particularly items like hats, mittens, coats etc.  Being not as young as we once were, Chris and I tend to forget what belongs to who!!!! ;)

Thanks, it would be a great help xx

Learning Journey files

We are in the process of completing the summary sheets ready for the children's learning journeys to go home at Christmas.  We will send them home at the end of next week.  We'll also send home the photo sticks for you to download the photos on to your computers at home. Once you have downloaded them, don't forget to delete them from the stick so that it doesn't fill up. 

Only two weeks till Christmas Day!!!!!!! 

Christmas trees

We painted wooden Christmas trees on Friday and decorated them with little stars. 

This week is week 2 of our menu

Christmas

We made some lovely Christmas things today.

Making snowmen



William's snowman!



Making tissue paper characters

Collections

We've been playing with a variety of collections over the last few days - buttons, pine cones, shells and lids. 

Chris' festive creations!



Collections provide children with opportunities for classifying, counting, shape recognition, learning colours, transferring from one containter to another, sharing and role-play. 

Change to the menu

We have altered the menu - on a Monday of week 2 we will be having fish pie instead of corned beef hash.  We tried it today and all the children enjoyed it.  If you would like us to add anything to our menu, then please let us know and we will try and incorporate it. 

Sorting, classifying and learning about colours

We played with the gingerbread men.  The children sorted them, balanced them, joined them, put them in and out of containers and we talked about the colour names of them. 

Christmas!

All being well and if the children want to, we will be starting to make our Christmas decorations etc this week.  We are taking our 'Dear Zoo' items down towards the end of the week.  We'll really miss them as they look fantastic, but I'm sure the Christmas things will look fantastic too! 

It's week 2 this week

Thank you so much!

We made up the shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child today.  We had enough items to make up 4 boxes, two for boys and two for girls.  We were also able to separate them into different age groups. 

I have donated online and printed off a barcode which will let us know where the shoe boxes get delivered. 

I actually got quite emotional when we were making up the shoe boxes thinking about how lucky our children are with all the presents they get at Christmas time.  Hopefully these will make some children, a lot less fortunate than ours, very happy.  Thank you so much for your donations. xx

More items for shoe boxes

Thank you to Tyler's mummy and Eszme's mummy for the items they brought this morning. 

Week beginning 7th November is week 3

Operation Christmas Child

Thank you to Joel's mummy who has sent in some items, a donation and a shoe box.  If you wish to contribute to this, then please send items by Friday 11th November.  We will make up the boxes with the children as we get enough items. 

Thanks.

New Ofsted website

Ofsted have launched a new website, where you can give your views on your child's school at any time during the year. 

The link is: http://parentview.ofsted.gov.uk/

Measuring

One of the children asked if we could measure each other, so thats what we did!

We found out who was the tallest, smallest and who was in the middle. 

Biscuits and ducks!

Yesterday the children made some biscuits.  They used the electric mixer (with support!) to blend the ingredients together.  They made lots of lovely star-shaped biscuits to take home. 

This morning Chris took some of the children to the duck pond to feed the ducks and to check on the cygnets.  There were 2 of them there again today. 

Facebook page

We have just set up a facebook page so if anyone has facebook it would be great if you 'liked' the page!

Its: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Home-from-Home-Childminding/301520343194803#!/pages/Home-from-Home-Childminding/301520343194803?sk=wall

I have also added it to the link list on the right.

Thanks.

Its week 1 this week

Parents evening Tuesday

Just to let you all know that we have parents evening for William at 5.05pm on Tuesday this week, so please could you all try to be on time that day.  Thank you :)

Operation Christmas Child

We have decided to collect items to send a few shoe boxes for the above charity.  I have requested some leaflets from the charity which will hopefully be sent over the next few days.  It would  be fantastic if you would all donate some items for this worthwhile cause.  Please see the following link for what items to include: http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/what-to-pack

More details to follow when we get it. 

Thanks very much. 

Week beginning 10th October is week 3

Apple crumble

The children made a delicious apple crumble today.  They peeled and chopped the apples, added a little bit of sugar and then cooked them until soft.  They then sprinkled crumble mixture on top and cooked the crumbles in the oven.  They had them with ice cream for pudding.  Yum!

Apples

We picked a lot of apples from our tree today.  We planted a pip when Charlotte and Alice were young and are now getting apples from the tree that grew.  There were some that were very high up, so Chris had to help!

We collected them all in the trolley.

Afterwards, Joel had the important job of counting them all.  There were 14!

Later this week we are going to peel and chop them and then make an apple pie or crumble.

Autumn leaves

We have been talking about the trees in our garden and the colours of the leaves.  We talked about how they change colour and then will eventually fall off.

We then made our own beautiful autumn pictures using sticky foam leaves.

This week is week 2 of our menu

Enjoy the weekend everyone!

Water play

We are making the most of this beautiful weather and have had the water in the garden this morning. 

Spare clothes

Please send spare clothes for your child that still fit them in case they do have to change into them.  :-)

Walk to the prom

We had a walk to the promenade this morning to have a look at the illuminations.  The children had a good run/walk alongside them, stopping to get a better look every now and then!

Safeguarding - next steps

Siobhan is on a 6 hour training course over 2 evenings this week - Tuesday and Thursday.  It will cover aspects of safeguarding children and detail what happens once social services become involved. 

This week is week 1 of our menu

Fairhaven Lake

We visited Fairhaven Lake today.  We took some bread to feed the ducks and we visited the RSPB centre, where we listened to different bird songs and saw lots of different sorts of birds.  We had a lovely walk around the lake before going out for lunch.

After lunch, we visited Pets at Home to look at all the animals.  We saw rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters and lots of fish.  We bought some wild bird food and came home to feed the birds in our garden. 

Stammering awareness training

I am attending a course on Monday evening at the City Learning Centre which will provide information about stammering.  If anyone has any questions about this subject please don't hesitate to speak to me.

Week beginning 19th September is week 3

Sunflowers

The children painted some beautiful pictures of the sunflowers on our table.  We talked about the colours we would need and how to make the yellow darker and lighter. 

:-)

Elmer at our zoo!

The children made Elmers today, using coloured paper squares.  All of the Elmers are now on our zoo wall and look fantastic! 

After we'd finished, we read 'Elmer' together and all agreed that Elmer is a very colourful elephant!

~Don't they look great?

New play area

Over the bank holiday weekend we redesigned the play area, laying some more artificial grass and rearranging the play equipment. 

New sandpit area, with blackboards and mirrors

A more inviting surface on which to play



Chalking



The bark was getting very muddy even at this time of year (we're not even into autumn!) and it seemed to make the bottom of the garden really dank and dark.  We cut back some of the trees to let in more light (when I say 'we' I actually mean Chris ;) ) and covered most of the area with the fake grass.  The children seem to love the new surface and keep rolling on it! 

Giraffes and crocodiles

We made some more animals for our zoo wall today.  We painted them all one colour and then used our fingers to make darker splodges over the top.  They look great!

GCSEs

We are very proud of Alice who got her GCSE results today.  She got 9 A*s, 5 As (1 from last year) and 1 C.  :-)

this week

We went to Stanley Park on Monday and had lots of fun.

On Tuesday we went to Happy Mount Park in Morecambe.  It was great!




We rode on the tractors and played in the park



We got very wet and had fun in the splash area

We had a ride on the train

I will post some other photos on the private blog for you to have a look at :-)

Proud parent moment!

Just to let you know that Charlotte got her AS results today.  She got a C in general studies, a B in biology, an A in psychology and a double distinction star in Sports and Exercise Science Btec.  We are very proud of her :). 

Weaving butterflies and dragonflies

We have used some of the Tesco vouchers to purchase some butterflies and dragonflies which can be used for weaving.  The children have used coloured ribbon to create pretty patterns on the wings. 

There's a snake in my boots!

What we made today.........

Our 'Dear Zoo' display so far......

Holidays

Just to remind you, as if you didn't already know, that we are on holiday for 2 weeks after today. 

When we get back (August 8th) it will be week 3 of our menus. 

Happy holidays everyone xx

The Role of Language in Early Child Development

I have been emailed a report today, which details the links between language at 24 months, and readiness for school. 

I've only had a quick look as it's quite long-winded (!) but it seems quite interesting. 

The link is as follows:
https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/RSG/AllPublications/Page1/DFE-RR134

You then click the 'download' box on the left of the screen. 

Thank you so much for the bags!

Dolls house

Just a photo, taken this morning, to show you how well all of the children play together.  Such a lovely photo!

carrier bags or nappy sacks

Please could you send a couple of carrier bags with your child's belongings for artwork, dirty shoes, clothes etc etc.  Also, if your child wears nappies, please could you send either nappy sacks or carrier bags for disposal of nappies.  We keep running out of carrier bags so this would be a big help. 

Thank you :)

A couple of photos for you

Duck pond visit

See-saw.......

Holidays

Please remember that we finish on Friday for 2 weeks. 

Hope that, if you are on holiday too, you have a fantastic time! 

Its week 2 this week!

New website that may be of interest

http://foundationyears.org.uk/

I will also put it into our links on the right of the page. 

We are on week 1 of our menu this week.

Last week..........

We had lots of fun with the new water-play table.

Made some monkey faces out of paper plates, to start us off with our 'Dear Zoo' theme.

We coloured in some numbers which we then laminated and put outside on a washing line.

We had fun ordering the numbers.

We painted some butterflies which we laminated and stuck outside.  We also laminated some bird pictures to help us identify what birds we see in the garden.

We saw loads and loads of baby frogs at the duck pond and fed the swans and cygnets. 

It was Alice's prom on Friday night.  She looked lovely and she had a fantastic time!