Mini Badgers Childminding

✨ All set and ready for another lovely day! ✨

I’m so excited to see the children in the morning and watch them explore everything we’ve put together. 💛

🌊 Rock pools & sharing – Our sensory tray is ready for little explorers, with scoops, bowls, shells and a sensory bottle to extend our story and encourage sharing, turn-taking and language.

🦁 We’re Going on a Lion Hunt! – The children have been showing such a big interest in big cats, so we’ve created our own little lion hunt to encourage imagination, storytelling, movement and lots of opportunities to talk.

🌈 Rainbows & weather – We’ll be making pom-pom rainbows and exploring our weather stones, developing colour recognition, counting, fine motor skills and creativity.

🦉 Our little owls – At the craft table we’ll be painting and creating owls using feathers and card. I know one little one in particular is going to be very excited about this one! 🥰

🚗 Cars, cars, cars! – Because we LOVE transport here! We’ve also started bringing in some autumn treasures and bugs we might spot on our walks.

🍂 Woodland & building – Our shelves are beginning to have a little autumn feel, with woodland animals, shape sorting, magnetic-tile bird houses and Stickle Brick aeroplanes.

🐊 And finally, our Selfish Crocodile book play is ready for some lovely small-world storytelling.

So many little invitations to play, explore, create and learn — I can’t wait to see where the children’s imaginations take them tomorrow. 🌿💛

The children have been talking about Madagascar recently, so to support their interest, I created a jungle-themed water tray 🦁🌿💦

I added scoops, containers, leaves, yellow beads and yellow stones for the children to enjoy filling, emptying and exploring. They had lots of fun discovering Alex the lion and his friends, creating their own animal voices and talking about what different animals like to eat.

This activity supported imaginative play, communication and language, fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, mathematical thinking, sensory exploration and understanding of the natural world. 🐾

Today we went blackberry picking and took some card and hammers with us! 🫐🔨

The children enjoyed picking their own blackberries and then using the hammers to make them go splat! They had so much fun experimenting with the fruit and creating their own unique patterns and designs.

Once they had finished, the children loved showing me their creations — they looked amazing! 👏✨

Learning: This activity supported fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, physical strength and control, as well as encouraging creativity and exploration. The children also developed their understanding of cause and effect as they discovered what happened when they hammered the blackberries onto the card. 🌿🎨

All set and ready to go after a lovely week off enjoying time with our new pup, Bailey 🐶💕 I cannot wait to see the children in the morning!

We have lots of fun learning through play waiting for them this week! 🌿✨

🦕 Dinosaurs – exploring footprints, storytelling and imaginative play.

🌊 Under the sea – naming sea creatures, building vocabulary and learning about the world around us.

🌳 Gruffalo & woodland animals – discovering who lives in the woods and encouraging imaginative play.

🦋 Butterfly craft – using felt tips, water and dolly pegs to explore mark making, patterns, colours and fine motor skills.

🦦 River theme – discovering river wildlife and talking about our local river visits.

🌈 Colour & building shelves – matching colours, creating rainbows, building bird houses and airports, developing problem-solving, creativity and coordination.

So much exploring, creating, talking and learning through play ready for another lovely week together! 💕🌿

Anddddd we are off for some well deserved time off. We shall see you all soon!

🫐 Blackberry adventures inspired by Rufus and the Blackberry Monster! 🫐

Lately we've been loving the story Rufus and the Blackberry Monster, so today we headed out on our very own blackberry picking adventure! The children carefully searched the hedgerows, picked juicy blackberries, and of course enjoyed tasting a few along the way! 😋

Back at our picnic spot, we squashed the blackberries and added a little water to make our own natural blackberry paint. The children explored painting with brushes, sticks, pinecones and even their hands, creating lots of wonderful marks, patterns and textures on the paper. Every masterpiece was unique!

These simple nature experiences support so much learning, including: 🍃 Developing fine motor skills through picking, squashing and painting. 🫐 Encouraging sensory exploration as the children explored different textures, colours and smells. 🎨 Inspiring creativity and self-expression using natural materials. 💜 Building curiosity about nature and where our food comes from. 🗣️ Supporting language development as we talked about the story, our discoveries and what we could see, feel and taste.

A beautiful morning of stories, nature, creativity and messy fun! 🌿💜

✨ All set and ready to gooooo! ✨

I cannot wait to see the children in the morning and watch where their imaginations takes them. 💚

🚂 On our table, we have trains, inspired by one of the children's current interests. We often spot trains on our walks around Poole Park, and everyone loves driving over the train bridge on the way home! We've paired this with woodland animals and bugs to create lots of opportunities for imaginative small world play.

🌲 In our house, we've created a magical Gruffalo world. We love spending time exploring the woods, and The Gruffalo is one of our all-time favourite stories. I can't wait to hear the children's storytelling and see what adventures they create.

🚒 In our sensory tray, the children have a very important mission... to rescue Peppa Pig and George from the fire! 🔥 We've combined two favourite interests—Peppa Pig and firefighters—to encourage imaginative play, teamwork and problem-solving. I'm so excited to see how they approach the rescue!

🌊 On our top shelf, we've kept our under-the-ocean invitation to play. The children have been so engaged with this area recently that we wanted to leave it out a little longer and see how their ideas continue to develop.

✨ Our little shelves are ready too with: 🌈 A colour matching activity
🦒 Building boxes to deliver our zoo animals
✈️ Aeroplanes to celebrate our love of spotting them flying over our home
🦆 Who Lives in the River?—inspired by another favourite place we love to visit together.

Through these invitations to play, the children will be developing communication and language, imaginative play, fine motor skills, problem-solving, early maths, colour recognition, storytelling, and learning about the world around them—all while having lots of fun. ❤️

Now everything is ready... let the adventures begin! 🥰

Today we stayed home and spent the morning enjoying our garden. 🌿

Even when we stay at home, the children never miss out on exciting learning opportunities. There's so much to explore right here!

In our mud kitchen today, I created a Dinosaur Café. 🦖 I made a couple of pots of chia seed slime and gathered natural resources straight from our garden for the children to use. They had lots of fun making dinosaur soup, baking pizzas for the dinosaurs, and even hosting their own dinosaur tea party!

Our water tray was given a sea-themed makeover too. 💙 I added blue-coloured water, blue beads, a variety of containers for filling and emptying, sea animals, and spoons for scooping and pouring. It was a wonderful invitation to explore, experiment, and play.

Through today's activities, the children developed their imagination and creativity, strengthened their fine motor skills, explored early mathematical concepts through filling and emptying, built communication and language skills through role play, and enjoyed sensory exploration using a range of textures and natural materials.

Today we had a wonderful time exploring Delph Woods! 🌿🎨

We packed some paint, brushes and paper and headed off for a creative outdoor adventure.

We wrapped large sheets of paper around a few trees at the children's height and placed some paint nearby. As we explored together, we encouraged the children to use both the brushes and natural resources they could find to create their artwork. They painted with leaves, sticks and leafy branches, experimenting with different textures, patterns and marks.

It was lovely to see each child's creativity shine. Some proudly painted beautiful flowers, others created pictures of their homes, while some simply enjoyed exploring colours and making different marks using the natural materials around them. Every piece of artwork was unique, and the children were so excited to show me what they had created.

Outdoor experiences like these provide so many wonderful learning opportunities while allowing children to connect with nature through open-ended play and creativity.

Learning opportunities: 🍃 Encouraged creativity and imaginative expression.
🎨 Developed fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination through painting and mark making.
🌳 Explored the natural environment and discovered different textures and materials.
💬 Built language skills as the children talked about their creations and shared their ideas.
🤝 Supported confidence, independence and social interaction through collaborative play.

🌿🪵 A wonderful morning of muddy play at Moors Valley Country Park! 🪵🌿

Today we visited Moors Valley Country Park and took along our outdoor play kit, including pots, pans, plates, spoons, forks, knives, mugs, labels and a bottle of water.

As we wandered along the woodland path, the children collected natural treasures such as ferns, leaves and pinecones until we found the perfect spot to stop and play.

While the children enjoyed a little bug hunt (and were very excited to discover a slow worm!), I set up a simple invitation to explore using the natural resources around us.

The children loved mixing mud, water and their woodland finds together to create all sorts of imaginative recipes. We were treated to plenty of muddy teas and coffees, as well as delicious muddy pizzas, pies and hearty stews!

It was lovely to see how calm, focused and deeply engaged they became. They remained happily immersed in their imaginative play for well over an hour, proving once again that the simplest activities often provide the richest learning opportunities. Of course, we all got wonderfully muddy along the way—but we had so much fun! 😝

One of the highlights of the morning was watching the children's social skills flourish. They demonstrated beautiful table manners, remembered to say please and thank you, shared resources, helped one another and even made sure I was served a lovely cup of muddy tea with a muddy pizza!

Learning opportunities included: 🍃 Developing imagination and creativity through role play. 🪵 Exploring natural materials and connecting with nature. 💪 Strengthening fine and gross motor skills through mixing, pouring, stirring and collecting. 💬 Building communication and language as they chatted, negotiated and shared ideas. 🤝 Encouraging turn-taking, cooperation, kindness and independence. 🔍 Developing curiosity through bug hunting and discovering wildlife in its natural habitat. 🧠 Supporting sustained concentration and problem-solving during open-ended play.

Sometimes all children need is a little mud, a splash of water and the freedom to explore. 💚