Woodway Kids Childcare

25/09/2026

🦋✨ Can you decorate a butterfly? ✨🦋

Our little learners explored creative arts and design by decorating their own butterflies using colourful paper shapes, stars, sequins and other craft materials. 🎨🌈

This activity supported:
🖐️ Fine motor skills – picking up, placing and sticking small pieces.
🎨 Creativity & imagination – choosing colours and creating their own designs.
👀 Hand-eye coordination – carefully positioning decorations onto the butterfly.
🗣️ Communication & language – talking about colours, shapes and their creations.
🦋 Understanding the world – exploring butterflies and noticing patterns, colours and features.

Learning through creativity, exploration and play! 🌈🦋✨

07/09/2026

Making maths exciting! 🔢✨ Our hands-on activities help little ones practise counting, number recognition, simple addition and communication skills, while also developing their fine motor skills through fun, practical activities! 🌈💕

Using tongs and wooden spoons to pick up and carefully place small balls onto the correct numbered cards helps develop hand-eye coordination, grip, control and precision — all while making learning fun and interactive! 🧸🧮🌈✨

05/09/2026

Received yesterday from one of our new little buddy's parents joining us this week. Fresh from their allotment. We have also received Rubarb, strawberries from another parents as well last term. Geuss Woodway Kids are so lucky to eat fresh organic grown vegetables and fruits. Thank you to both of our lovely parents for providing these goodies for our setting ❤️

18/08/2026

Cereal crushing looks like simple fun, but it’s packed with big brain & body benefits for young children! 🧠👇
​🏋️ Builds Strength: Rolling and pressing builds arm, wrist, and core strength needed for crawling and pulling up.
​💥 Cause & Effect: Babies learn that their physical actions make things crunch and change shape!
​👁️ Hand-Eye Coordination: Target-practice with the rolling pin sharpens early visual tracking.
​👅 Taste-Safe Sensory: Explore sound, texture, and taste with zero choking worries!

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18/08/2026

It's so wonderful to see the oak group discovering the joy of matching shapes! 🥰 Their faces light up when they correctly identify and matching them, a truly incredible milestone in their EYFS journey. It’s amazing how quickly they grasp these concepts, developing their cognitive skills through such playful and engaging activities, truly celebrating every little success. Seeing them so focused and happy, engaged in this fun learning, fills my heart with so much love and pride, and I’m just so excited for their continued growth and all the brilliant things they'll achieve. This exploration of shapes in EYFS is such an important part of their early development, and I feel incredibly blessed to witness it, cheering them on every step of the way! We are matching these fun learning moments with so much joy and enthusiasm, because every bit of progress is a reason to celebrate. 🥳

18/08/2026

After a long break, keep these 3 R’s in mind and at the forefront of your practice.

Regulation: Long breaks disrupt routines and bring a wide range of emotions back into the room. Children need time and space to regulate, and honestly, you probably do too. Young children rely heavily on co-regulation with you, so start there. Take slow, deep breaths, and keep the classroom dim and the pace gentle (if possible). Be patient and kind to yourself and the children. Remember, movement is a primary way children regulate their bodies, so expect and plan for it rather than working against it. Don’t stress about jumping straight into curriculum.

Rhythm: Returning to a predictable routine matters, but flexibility within that rhythm matters just as much. Children are recalibrating. Build in more opportunities for free play within your blocks of time and allow extra time for transitions. This isn’t lost time, but rather, it’s how everyone settles back in.

Relationships: Connection is what anchors everything and connection leads to cooperation. Prioritize check-ins, shared laughter, and time side-by-side. When children feel safe, seen, and reconnected, learning naturally follows. There is no rush and no race here. You and the children feeling good is the most important piece in all of this.

Wishing everyone a gentle, joyful start to the new school year. ❤

18/08/2026

It's time to celebrate a truly incredible graduation party 2026! This is such a special day to remember for all our amazing leavers. We've always loved celebrating our leavers achievements and Woodway Kids has truly made it grand year after year. I'm so incredibly proud of everyone and can't wait to see what you all do next. Sending you all so much love and wishing you the very best! Cheers to your bright futures! 🎉

Leavers 2026 🥰

11/05/2026

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11/05/2026

Happy childminding week to all the hard working childminders who work tirelessly to raise the future generation 🙌 🥰

13/04/2026

This 👇🥰

I was planning constantly.
Setting up activities.
Filling tables.
Making sure every moment of the day had something ready.

And yet…
Something didn’t feel right.

The moment I stopped overplanning, everything changed.

I remember my headteacher walking into the classroom.
Looking around. Pausing.

There were barely any tables…
and the ones we had? Empty.

“What are the children going to do?!” she asked, concerned.

“They’re going to choose,” I said.

Here’s the shift that changed everything:

Having less out didn’t mean I was lazy.
It didn’t mean I’d run out of ideas.
It didn’t mean I cared less.

It meant I finally understood this:

👉 The more I put out… the more distracted the children became.
👉 The more I planned… the less the children led.

They flitted.
They skimmed.
They moved from one thing to the next without depth.

Because everything had already been decided for them.

And this isn’t your fault.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that good practice looks like
full tables, constant provision, and beautifully set “invitations to play.”

Of course we overplan.
We’ve been taught to.

But children don’t need their whole day pre-filled.

They need space to:
✨ follow their own ideas
✨ return to familiar resources
✨ become deeply absorbed in play
✨ discover what truly interests them

Because that’s where the real magic of learning unfolds.

So what’s the “right way”?

Strip it back.

Create strong, simple continuous provision.
Offer open-ended resources.
Step back enough for children to step forward.

Let the play belong to them.

Because when you stop overplanning…
you don’t lose control.

You finally make space for what really matters.

🤍