Duck pond yesterday

Hi, I didn't get chance to write last night - we were at Wigan watching PNE lose against them! 

We went to the duck pond yesterday.  The children ran around and we fed the ducks, who were all quite hungry!  We were also looking for changes in the leaves and collected some leaves to make a picture.  We intended to make them today, but we'd had a 'glue' accident!  We'll save them and make one next week instead, when we've had chance to buy some more PVA glue. 

We found some toadstools at the duck pond and we took the chance to remind the children that, although they look like mushrooms, they must never eat them because they will make their tummies poorly. 

Outdoor nature

We welcomed Kaiden-Lee into our setting today.  He's been a really happy little boy and the other children have been making him laugh.

I also played a game, called 'Bag of bits', which is a bag full of various items (can be anything you want) used to encourage thinking and communication in the children. 

The children had fun in the garden looking for signs of autumn.  We found some acorns, ripe rowan berries and saw that our apples were nearly ready for picking! 

Menu, week beginning 20th September

Monday - Chicken fried rice
Tuesday - Pasta bolognaise
Wednesday - Roast ham dinner
Thursday - Home made pizza
Friday - Beef casserole and mashed potato

Madhatters and blocks

We went to Madhatters this morning and again, the children enjoyed running around and playing on the equipment. 

We've also played with the plastic blocks today, making towers and 'boats', as well as recognising and classifying them into colours. 

Hope you all have a great weekend!  We're off to watch PNE probably get beaten by Norwich tomorrow!

Yesterday and today!

Sorry, I didn't get time to write the blog last night.  We spent a lot of time doing jigsaws yesterday, which is one of Adam's favourite activities. 

After our tea-time snack, the children created a masterpiece for the playroom wall, using a long piece of wallpaper!



Today, following on from the water painting last week, the children painted stones.  They really enjoyed mixing the paint colours and were quite excited about what colours the paints would make.  We will do another activity, perhaps on paper, where they can mix colours to experiment.  They have taken their stones home tonight - maybe you could use them as paperweights???





New page on potty training

Please have a look at the new page we've created advising about 'potty training'.  If you have any questions at all on this subject, please do not hesitate to ask.  We are by no means experts, but if we can help we will. :-)

New folders

We have purchased some zip-lock folders for each child to take home every day, so that they have somewhere to put their artwork, rather than squeezing it into a small ruck-sack or carrying it loosely and potentially spoiling it.

For those of you who don't use a daily diary anymore, we are going to make '2-way communication sheets' which will also go in there.  We will use them to write on messages and comments, and if you want to advise us of anything (as, like me, you may forget to mention something in the morning when dropping-off), then please use these sheets for this purpose.  

Menu - week beginning 13th September

Monday - Corned beef hash
Tuesday - Cheesy turkey and ham pasta with vegetables
Wednesday - Chicken curry and rice
Thursday - Shepherds pie
Friday - Fish fingers, potato wedges and baked beans

threading and name-labels

The children played with the buttons and strings today, threading through the little holes.  This improves fine-motor skills which is important for handwriting, plus the children really enjoy this activity which is the most important thing!!  They also played with the plastic gingerbread men, which they can attach together, sort and line-up. 

The children created a new name label for themselves for when they arrive in the morning.  We are going to change where they 'self-register' once all the children have made a new label.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend, whatever you have planned.  See you next week.

Making new name labels

Mad Hatters and dressing up

We all went to Mad Hatters this morning.  The children had a good time playing on the soft play equipment.  They were very happy to see Erin there with her mummy!

We got out the dressing up clothes too today and the children became princesses, police officers, fire fighters, monkeys and witches!

We have designed t-shirts for the children to wear when we are out, so that if they should get lost (hopefully this will never happen!), it advises that they are with their childminder and has our contact details on. 

  

Water painting

Gosh, it was hot today!!!

The children played with water and brushes, making patterns, lines, circles and other marks on the patio. This will help with handwriting, developing their fine and gross motor skills.

We also provided them with stones and shells, which we collected from the beach recently, and the children painted those, as well as swishing them around in the water and lining them up on the patio.

Menu - week beginning 6th September

Really sorry, I forgot to do it at the beginning of the week. 

Monday - Sausage, mash, vegetables
Tuesday - Pasta in cheese/tomato sauce with ham and peas
Wednesday - Spaghetti bolognaise
Thursday - Fish cakes, broccoli and cauliflower
Friday - Chicken casserole and rice

Welcome and hidden letters!

We welcomed Eszme into our setting today.  It was her first full day with us and we hope that she will be very happy here. 

This morning, we did an activity involving shaving foam and hidden letters (initial sounds of the childrens' names) and laminated names.  We also included  laminated MacDonalds and CBeebies logos.  The aim was to have fun exploring the foam and at the same time finding letters and names to teach recognition.  As you can imagine, the children were very familiar with the logos!  One child, when asked what one of them was, shouted, "Chicken nuggets!"  We all got very messy and had lots of fun. 

Duck pond today

We visited the duck pond this morning.  The ducks were quite hungry today and ate all the bread that we took for them. 

Hope you all have a great weekend - the weather forecast is fab so make the most of it!!  See you next week x

Feeding the ducks

Walk to the prom

We had a lovely walk up to the prom today.  We took drinks and a little snack and watched the trams go by. 

Thank you to Joel's mummy and Adam's mummy for the stationery supplies that you have provided recently - they are appreciated. 

Sports day

We had our annual sports day today.  We did lots of activities, such as running, egg and spoon, beanbag balancing and jumping races, throwing balls into a bucket, who could throw the furthest, penalties and we had lots of fun with the parachute.  The winners got a 1st place sticker and everyone got a certificate for taking part. 

Egg and spoon race

Running under the parachute

Fleetwood beach

We went to Fleetwood beach on Friday morning.  We collected lots of pebbles in all different sizes, and lots of shells.  The children love to play with them in our garden, so we wanted to add to our collection.  We also found a jellyfish on the sand.

We had a game of football on the beach too and watched the big ferries sail past.

Jellyfish

Choosing pebbles and shells

Woodland Gardens

We had a lovely morning at Salisbury Woodland Gardens yesterday.  The children did some balancing on logs, we looked for bugs, we did bark rubbings and rubbings from the shapes on the benches and the children ran around and climbed trees. 

Proud Mum and Dad!

We're really proud of Charlotte and Alice on their GCSE results!  Charlotte got 11 GCSEs in total (1 A*, 5 As, 2 Bs and 3 Cs) and will be starting 6th Form in September, and Alice got an 'A' in her English Literature GCSE, which she took a year early.  Well done to you both xxxx

Have a great weekend!

Just to say hope you all have a lovely weekend.  See you on Monday. 

No one has commented on the blog for a while, please feel free!  Comments are always welcome :-).

Happy Mount Park

We had a lovely day at Happy Mount Park today.  The children got very wet and had lots of fun in the splash area and then we had our picnic.  We then went to play in the new 'natural' adventure playground, where the children did lots of running around.  Next it was time to have a ride on the train, before playing in the smaller park for younger children, where there were lots of ride-on toys and smaller play equipment. 

It must've been a tiring day as all the children fell asleep on the way home! 

We've used our junk to make some lovely models today. We also made some pencil pots for mummies and daddies which we then painted and decorated with stickers.

We've played with the trains and track, played outside (even in the rain), played with playdoh and done some colouring and drawing.

The older children went to the park this afternoon whilst the younger ones had a well-deserved rest.

Diggers, dumpers and trucks

One of the children visited 'Diggerland' on their holidays, so today we got out all the diggers and other construction vehicles.  The children had great fun loading, tipping and transporting the wooden blocks, building 'houses' with the blocks during their play.  Later in the afternoon they played with some of the junk, transporting it in the same way. 

We also made some biscuits which the children ate as their afternoon snack. 

Busy builders :-)

Thank you....

....to Adam and Joel's mummies for supplying us with lots of junk for modelling.  Either this week or next week we'll be making models and using some of the larger items for construction. 

If anyone has any more junk, then please bring it along - we're sure to make use of it! 

Foundation degree progress

I don't know whether you all remember, but we started studying for the Foundation Degree in Early Years last October.  Chris and I have now passed our first year and are now qualified to level 4, gaining a 'Certificate in Early Years Practice'. 

Menu - week beginning 16th August

Monday - Sausage, mash and veg
Tuesday - Chicken and pasta in a cheese/tomato sauce
Wednesday - Spaghetti bolognaise
Thursday - Fish cakes (mashed white fish mixed with potato and onion), wedges, peas
Friday - Chicken casserole and rice

Hello!!

Just to say 'hello' to you all after our holiday.  We had a really good time and the weather, believe it or not, wasn't too unkind to us! 

See you this week x

Certificate from Ofsted

This came in the post yesterday :-)

Fairy cakes

We made some fairy cakes today.  The children were desperate to eat them when they came out of the oven, so we had one without icing and then iced the others.  We used some food-colouring pens to make pictures, patterns and to write on the buns. 

Tram trip

We all had a ride on a tram up to the Pleasure Beach this morning. The children chose postcards and we sat on the steps to the beach to write them.

We played on the sand and found a really big jellyfish!

We then caught the tram home and posted our postcards in a letter box.

These are the trams we rode on this morning.

Junk please!!

After our holidays, we are planning for the children to make models out of 'junk'. We would be very grateful for all your old boxes, tubes, yogurt pots, tubs and anything else you can think of that would be good for the children to use.

We will also be constructing outdoors, so we would be very grateful for some larger boxes, any old pieces of wood (with no jagged edges), crates etc.

It would help us if you would bring all items during the first week we are back from holiday, just so that we can leave our house tidy (or as tidy as it can be ;-)) whilst we are away.

Thank you x

Just a little thank you...

...to those who finished work earlier than usual yesterday and came early for your children. We only had one child here after 4.15, so it was much appreciated. I was able to catch up on some paperwork (observations, planning, learning journeys etc), which I normally do in an evening, whilst Chris and our little friend had a good time playing and reading stories together. Its not often we get an unexpected early finish - thank you; we used it wisely! x

Menu week 26th July

Monday - Corned beef hash
Tuesday - Shepherds Pie
Wednesday - Cheesy turkey and ham pasta with vegetables
Thursday - Chicken curry and rice
Friday - Fish fingers, potato wedges and baked beans/peas

Trains and trams

This morning, the children asked to play with the trains and track.

At around 9.45, we all set off to the prom. When we got there, we had a little snack and a drink whilst watching the trams go by. Unfortunately the tide was in so we weren't able to go on to the beach - we'll do this during the holidays hopefully. We walked back home again just in time for lunch.

William and Thomas finished school early this afternoon and are looking forward, as are we, to their 6-week holiday.

Going for a walk in the morning......

.....weather permitting! We though we might have a wander up to the prom with the children to give them some sea air. We may go on to the beach, depending on the tides and condition of the sand (it's sometimes very muddy at Bispham). Fingers crossed for sun!

Songs and painting the sun!

We sang lots of songs this morning and the children played along with all the different musical instruments.

We also made our own suns by drawing round our hands, cutting out the shape on yellow and orange paper and then sticking them on to the back of a yellow-painted paper plate. The children had a great time and we're hoping that, by sticking the suns on the wall, we may encourage the real sun to stay out a bit longer!

Victoria is now on holiday for six weeks, so we wish her a very happy time! We'll miss you Victoria - see you in September. xx

What we did yesterday!

Sorry, I didn't get chance to write the blog last night.

The children played with the dolls for a short time this morning, before we all went to play outside. The sun was a very welcome change!!

We saw lots of butterflies on our buddleia bushes today. The children kept letting us know when they saw one which was lovely - they were really excited!

10 steps for healthy toddlers

I've put a link on the left of the page for some information about food, sleep etc which may be of interest to you.

Cutting and sticking

As part of our 'holiday' theme, the children practised their cutting skills, cutting out photos that they liked in some holiday brochures - kindly donated by Erin's mummy.

They then used their photos to make their own collage. We talked about our holidays during the activity and what we would take with us to a hot country. We also discussed where we were all going on our holidays this year and we've made a poster of all the different places we're going to be visiting.

Duck pond

We visited the duck pond today. Although we got a little wet, the children enjoyed themselves feeding the ducks and swans. We saw the ducklings, who have grown quite big now. Bradley fell asleep on the way there and only woke up on our way home, so unfortunately missed it all!

Certificate from Action Medical Research

Duck pond tomorrow!

We're going to visit the duck pond in the morning, weather permitting! If any of you have any bread that you don't want, then please send it our way :-). I'm sure the swans, coots, ducks and ducklings will be very grateful. Thank you x

Snacks included this week will be.....

Toast
Apples
Bananas
Crumpets
Scotch Pancakes
Fruit toast
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Hot dogs
Cheese
Hot Cross Buns
Carrot sticks
Frozen Frubes
Yogurt

Menu - week beginning 12th July

Monday - Chicken fried rice
Tuesday - Pasta bolognaise
Wednesday - Roast turkey dinner
Thursday - Home made pizza
Friday - Beef casserole and mashed potato

Change for Life

Please have a look at the link to the Change for Life website for some ideas to keep our children healthy.

Den building, tents, tunnels

We played outside with blankets, tents and tunnels. The children had great fun crawling through the tunnels and hiding from each other. They played at dinosaurs and chased each other through the tunnels and around the garden. Chris and I were tired just watching them!!

Menu 5th July

Monday - Corned beef hash
Tuesday - Spaghetti bolognaise
Wednesday - Cheesy turkey and ham pasta with vegetables
Thursday - Chicken curry and rice
Friday - Fish fingers, wedges, baked beans/peas

Painting outdoors

Gosh, it was hot today!

The children did some painting outside. It gave us an opportunity to talk about colours, what would happen if we mixed two colours together, shapes and patterns.

We played in the garden for the rest of the day.

Mad Hatters

We all went to Mad Hatters this morning. We've not been for quite a while due to the lovely weather, but we thought we would make the most of the rain!

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you will see a little message from Paddington :-)