Bug and Bean Childcare

🧮 Mathematics through play at Bug & Bean Childcare! 🧮

This afternoon at Bug & Bean Childcare, we’ve been developing our mathematical thinking through a hands-on adding and removing blocks activity! 🧱✨

The children enjoyed placing the blocks onto the number grid, adding more, taking some away and then working out how many we had altogether. We encouraged the children to count carefully, recognise quantities and talk about how the number changed when we added or removed blocks.

This activity supported the EYFS – Mathematics, particularly developing children’s understanding of number, quantity and the relationships between numbers. It links closely with Birth to 5 Matters, supporting children to develop counting skills, explore the composition of numbers and understand that numbers can be combined and separated.

Learning maths through practical, meaningful play helps children build confidence and develop a strong foundation for future mathematical learning. ❤️

✨ Welcome to our playroom at Bug and Bean Childcare! ✨

We’ve carefully designed our playroom with children in mind. Every unit and resource is at child height, encouraging independence, confidence, and free choice throughout the day.

Our inviting environment allows children to explore, create, problem-solve, and use their imaginations through play. Whether they’re building, creating, role-playing, reading, or investigating new resources, we believe children learn best when they’re free to follow their own interests in a safe and nurturing space. 🌿🧸🎨

📅 We have childcare availability from January 2027.

If you’re looking for a warm, home-from-home setting where your child can thrive, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to message us to arrange a visit and see our playroom for yourself! 💚

✨ Availability from January 2027 ✨

We are delighted to share that we have childcare spaces available from January 2027 at Bug and Bean Childcare! 🌿🪴

If you’re looking for a warm, home-from-home setting where children can learn through play, explore the outdoors, enjoy regular community outings, and build confidence in a nurturing environment, we’d love to hear from you.

We offer:
🍃 A child-led approach to learning
🧩 Daily play-based activities
🌳 Outdoor adventures and nature walks
👵 Regular visits to our local care home
🐑 Community outings to local parks and play cafés
❤️ A caring, experienced team in a small, nurturing setting

If you’re expecting a baby, returning to work, or planning ahead for 2027, now is a great time to get in touch. Spaces are limited, so we recommend arranging a visit early.

📩 Send us a message to book a viewing or find out more – we’d love to meet you and your family!

We finished our busy week in the best way possible… with a calming nature walk. 🌿💚

After a wonderful week of visiting our local care home, spending time at one of our favourite games cafés, and enjoying one of our favourite play cafés in Coulsdon, we slowed the pace and headed out into nature.

On our walk we picked fresh blackberries, chatted about everything we could see, and visited our favourite sheep and cows. 🐑🐄🍇

We feel so incredibly lucky to have this right on our doorstep. Within just a 10-minute walk, we can go from exploring in our playroom to immersing ourselves in nature, surrounded by open fields and animals.

The children ended the week enjoying a day full of all their favourite things, making memories, building connections with nature, and simply enjoying the world around them. 💚

🌟 Childcare Space Available – January 2027 🌟

We have one childcare space available from January 2027 at Bug and Bean Childcare.

🕗 Opening Hours:
• Tuesday to Thursday: 8:00am – 5:30pm
• Friday: 8:00am – 4:00pm

We:
✨ Accept all funded childcare entitlements
✨ Accept Tax-Free Childcare payments
✨ Offer both term-time only and all-year-round places

If you’re looking for a warm, nurturing home-from-home environment for your little one and would like to arrange a visit, we’d love to hear from you.

📩 Please send us a message for more information or to book a viewing.

Last week, the children decided they wanted to make a giant mud puddle! 🌧️🤎 They started by jumping in with their wellies and shoes on, but it wasn’t long before they decided it would be even more fun to take them off and squelch through the mud with their bare feet!

There were lots of giggles as they explored the cool, wet mud between their toes, noticing how it felt, sounded and moved beneath them. It was a wonderful reminder that sensory play doesn’t always have to involve our hands—our feet can explore and learn too!

Sensory experiences like this are an important part of the EYFS. They help children to:
🤎 Develop their sensory processing and body awareness.
🤎 Build balance, coordination and gross motor skills.
🤎 Explore different textures and describe what they can feel, supporting language development.
🤎 Boost confidence, curiosity and independence through child-led exploration.
🤎 Support emotional wellbeing by allowing children to freely explore the natural world.

At Bug and Bean Childcare, we love following the children’s interests and embracing messy, meaningful play. Sometimes the best learning happens when we simply kick off our shoes and jump right in! 🌿💦

We often get asked, “Why don’t you use the car? Why do you choose to walk or take the bus and train everywhere? Wouldn’t it be easier just to drive?”

The simple answer… because we’d miss so much.

We’d miss spotting a huge caterpillar making its way along the path. 🐛
We’d miss picking juicy blackberries from the bushes on the way to the park. 🍇
We’d miss watching gliders soaring overhead and learning their names together. ✈️

The journey is just as important as the destination. Every walk, bus ride and train journey is filled with opportunities to learn, explore, ask questions and make memories.

By slowing down, the children notice the little things that so many of us rush past. They build independence, develop confidence, learn about the world around them and, most importantly… they absolutely love every minute of it. 💚

At Bug & Bean Childcare, we believe some of the best learning happens along the way. 🌿✨

🚤💦 Yesterday we explored floating and sinking by making boats from building bricks and testing them in our mini brick water play! The children loved designing their own creations, predicting whether they would float, and making changes to see what worked best.

To make the activity even more exciting, we created a slide for the bricks to travel down before splashing into the water. This encouraged the children to explore cause and effect, test their ideas, problem-solve, and develop their creativity through hands-on play.

This activity links to the Birth to 5 Matters guidance by supporting children’s Mathematical Development through predicting, comparing and testing ideas, as well as Understanding the World as they explore materials, forces, and how things move and float. It also promotes Physical Development through building and manipulating the bricks, and Communication and Language as children share their ideas, discuss their discoveries, and work together.

We loved seeing the children’s curiosity, creativity, and confidence grow as they investigated, experimented, and learned through play. 🌊🧱✨

🥔🥕 Veggie Painting Fun! 🎨

Today we explored a creative painting activity using a selection of vegetables, including potatoes, carrots and celery, to create unique prints and patterns. The children loved investigating the different shapes, textures and marks each vegetable made, using their imagination to create their own artwork.

Activities like this provide so many wonderful learning opportunities. As the children dipped, stamped, rolled and printed, they were developing their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, creativity, language through conversations about colours and textures, and curiosity as they explored cause and effect.

✨ EYFS Links:
🌱 Expressive Arts & Design – Exploring materials and creating with different media.
🌱 Physical Development – Strengthening fine motor skills through grasping, stamping and painting.
🌱 Communication & Language – Introducing new vocabulary and encouraging conversations about colours, shapes and textures.
🌱 Understanding the World – Exploring natural materials and discovering different ways everyday vegetables can be used.

Sometimes the simplest resources create the biggest smiles! 💚