Bright Starts Childminding

🍊 Oranges and Lemons 🍋

Last week we really got our senses going by adding slices of oranges and lemons into water with yellow mica powder for that added bit of sparkle ✨

👃🏻 Smell
🖐🏻 Feel
👅 Taste!
👀 Look

Along with the slices I also added some chunkier segments of both the oranges and lemons to allow the children to really feel and squeeze them to see the juices!

🤌🏻 Squeeze
🫗 Pour
🥣 Mix
🥣 Stir

🧁👩🏻‍🍳 Turning role-play into reality 👩🏻‍🍳🧁

The children had been role-playing being 'bakers' in our play kitchen for quite some time yesterday morning baking cakes and making noodles! When one of the children asked to make 'real cakes' so that's exactly what we did 🥰

We gathered our ingredients and tools needed and set to work! The children worked together to carefully crack the eggs and add them into our dry ingredients and then used an electric whisk to mix everything together

Once the cakes were cooked and cooled they chose to decorate them with icing sugar and colourful sprinkles 🧁

Yummy 😋

We've definitely been making the most of our outdoor area over the last few weeks ☀️

One of the children's favourite activities from last week was making 'potions' in our outdoor kitchen. So much so that they asked for it again this week too!

We used squeezy bottles with coloured water, mica powder and glitter! Along with various containers, pots and pans for the children to pour and mix their potions!

A simple activity that is quick and easy to set up and encourages so many learning opportunities such as creativity, language, fine-motor development, turn taking and sharing, colour mixing, shape, space and measure and so much more, all through the wonderful world of play! 🥰

Bright Starts Childminding

🌊 Ocean Rescue 🌊

A lovely ocean inspired fine-motor invitation to play in on our light box

The children used pipettes to squeeze warm water over the 'icebergs' to rescue the ocean animals and sea shells that had been frozen inside!

Inspired by our visit to see the Whales and Ocean Photography of the Year at Lichfield Cathedral the children have enjoyed creating some beautiful ocean animal artwork

🪼 Jellyfish - the children used paint sticks to decorate a paper plate to create the body of their Jellyfish and then added strips of coloured paper to create their tentacles. The older children used scissors to cut their own tentacles, and even created repeating patterns

🐋 Whales in the sea - the children decorated their whales using pencil crayons and felt pens before cutting them out. They then used a sponge roller to create ocean waves 🌊 for their whales to swim in

This week we had an exciting trip to Lichfield where we visited Lichfield Cathedral to see the WHALES by Tessa Campbell Fraser sculptures 🐋

The children were absolutely fascinated by the sculptures and also enjoyed looking at the Ocean Photography of the Year that is displayed around the Cathedral 🌊

We had a picnic lunch 🧺 fed the ducks at Minster Pool 🦆 and enjoyed a yummy ice cream treat🍦

⚽ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 C O M E O N E N G L A N D 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 ⚽

🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

⚽ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 F O O T B A L L F E V E R 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 ⚽

Ahead of England's World Cup Semi Final game tomorrow, the children have been designing their very own football shirts

They've enjoyed looking at this year's World Cup shirts and talking about the different colours and patterns they could see

I think they've done a brilliant job 👕⚽

⚽ 🍪 World Cup football gingerbread biscuits 🍪 ⚽

Ahead of England's round of 32 game last night the children enjoyed decorating football shaped gingerbread biscuits with coloured icing to create their very own World Cup edible footballs 😋

We looked at photos of the World Cup football and talked about the colours we could see before making colour coordinated icing sugar to put on top of our biscuits

!!!