Karen's Childminding

I am so pleased to announce that I have had my first graded Ofsted inspection and I have been awarded a Good!

Even slightly earlier than planned, so it's great to be able to share with everyone following me the evidence of the fantastic setting I have available, and my report is now officially published on the Ofsted website for anyone looking for childcare and wondering if I'm any good 😂☺️

Ofsted seem to think so 😊

One of my Mum's told me today that little one is planning his birthday party, and the only person he wants there so far is me! 😂🥰🥰

Honestly it's feedback like that that makes my heart burst 😊

Snow!! 😍😍😍

I can't lie, this was definitely an adult led activity, but I was having just as much fun as the little ones!

Snowmen, snow angels, snowballs, hot chocolate and marshmallows, what a perfect day! 🥰🥰

Happy World Book Day! Show us your costumes and get reading! 🤓

Happy Pancake Day! What do you like on yours? 🥰

Happy hump day! What a week we've had!

Unfortunately my little girl came down with a sickness and diarrhoea bug Sunday night, resulting in closure Monday and Tuesday, and then last night it became apparent I had caught it too! 🙈

I'll be closed for the remainder of the week, but if everything goes ok I'll be out of my 48hour exclusion by lunchtime Friday.

Thank you to my families for being so understanding, and for all the kind thoughts and offerings of help, it's so nice to have such great families around me 😊😊❤️❤️

I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Those that have spoken to me know I'm looking forward to spending some time recuperating, getting better (aren't we all!), and spending some quality time with my family. I hope you all get to enjoy the same, and I'll see you in the New Year, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for new adventures! Merry Christmas 🥰🥰🥰

We are ready to support BBC Children in Need! Have a lovely weekend! Xx

Can you tell what it is yet?

Come over to Karen's Childminding on Charles Street, New Arley, to see our scarecrow for the Arley and Ansley Big Local Scarecrow Trail! Learn about our mystery King or Queen before heading off to see the others around the villages! Have fun! Xx

A week of change this week as I say goodbye to my older little ones who have begun their journey through school this week, and even though I'll be lucky enough to drop them to school each morning, I'll still be sending them off with a tear in my eye as I remember how far they've come with me!

On the other hand I welcomed a new little one this week, and it's been a pure delight getting to know him, and I cannot wait to get out and about showing him the wonders and imagination to be had in the world!

Like and follow my page to find out what we get up to as we explore and discover together on our learning journey's!

Hello again! I'm back after a very lovely two weeks off with my family! We even managed a holiday in there, along with some thorough organising of my resources and upstairs spaces!

I've got a busy month ahead as we finish up with one more week of summer holidays, and then back to school! My little ones are starting school and so I'll be settling some new little people ready for some exciting times here at Karen's Childminding! I do still have a part time space available, so if you do need care for your smallest small, don't hesitate to get in touch to find out more!

Karen xx

Amazing start to the summer holidays with a trip to Whitacre Fairy Trail to find Pickles the pig, a joint birthday, our playgroup with a special visit from StoryExpress, we've sewn puppets and made paper cup towers and even made and (attempted!) to fly our own kites!

I can't wait for the rest of our summer plans! 😁

Karen's Childminding still has HAF spaces available throughout the summer holidays!

If your child aged 5-8yrs is in receipt of income based free school meals and has been sent an eligible HAF code, all you need to do is complete a booking form and your child can join in with a variety of activities at Karen's Childminding. Sessions are 9am-3pm and could include baking, trips out, kite making, circus skills, arts and crafts, scavenger hunts, bug hunts and much more!

Please get in touch for a booking form or if you would like to know more :)

I hope you are all coping with the weather! We have! We made our own ice lollies this morning, before having our own cinema experience to stay inside out of the worst of it! Our lollies turned out so yummy, we'll definitely be making more! ☺️☺️

Are you looking for childcare from September?

If you want your little one to be out and about, learning to play with other children, in a nurturing family home, then Karen's Childminding may be right for you!

I have spaces available from September and would love to hear from anyone looking for childcare! Located in New Arley and Ofsted registered, I offer a meet and greet session where we can get to know each other, and settling in sessions to help your little one transition into my setting.

If you would like to know more, or arrange a visit, please drop me a message either on Facebook or on 07718327818 ☺️

Just some of the best bits of what we've been up to the last couple of weeks! Another trip to Tiny Town (because we love it so much!) and enjoying the sun shine, playing in the mud kitchen, and colouring our very own potting shed! Believe it or not there are 5 children inside it in the living room pic! 😂

The weather last week was particularly warm, so we traded out a walk to the woods in favour of playing beach, complete with sand and water!

I hope all the Dad's out there enjoyed yesterday, I know my little ones enjoyed making their wonderful cards and gifts for their special parent!

Longest day tomorrow, I hope yours is full of love and happiness ☺️❤️

Karen xx

Another lovely week here at Karen's Childminding, with a Jubilee themed group on Wednesday, our usual trips to the woods, dance class, and birthday balloons that we drew funny faces onto! We practiced our scissor skills and finished the week off with a Jubilee picnic at Arley Primary school with the big kids! We loved the bouncy castle best I think, although winning some books in the raffle was a bonus too! ☺️

Have a lovely week everyone ❤️❤️

Excited! A while ago we planted peas and carrots in our big planter and we can now see the beginnings of our peas! We also planted sunflowers, cucumbers and strawberries, all of which are now growing thick and fast!
We've done lots more over the last two weeks, including going to dance class, walking through the woods, our usual groups and working on setting up our new group at Arley and St Michael's community centre!

I hope you all enjoyed your Easter holidays! I know I enjoyed some precious family time with my own two! It has been great though to get back stuck in with my little ones, with some trips to the shops, the opticians, and with an exciting visitor to our Shustoke Stay ‘n’ Play group, meaning we've got some new books to enjoy! We've also enjoyed seeing our after school friends again and can't wait for next week!

Until then, enjoy your weekend! 🥰

Well that's me off for a week! I'm going to enjoy some family time with my partner and our two little ones, but not before sharing with you all the things we've been doing during the first week of the Easter holidays!

We took a trip to Coombe Abbey to feed the ducks and have ice-cream, Hoar Park to feed the animals and play in the park (check out the pig giving us a smile!), and Tiny Town where we role played being police, fire fighters, actors, doctors, beauticians, vets, construction workers and loads more! We took our usual walk through the woods, found a ladybird, had an Easter egg hunt and made Easter decorations!

We also have a new addition to the garden this week; our very own mud kitchen, so we took a trip to the shop to buy some colourful paint to paint it!

It's been a busy week but I am looking forward to some time with my family, (not that I expect it will be less busy with our two 😂) so I hope you all enjoy the rest of your Easter holidays, and don't get sick from too much chocolate! 😁

Happy Easter! ❤️❤️❤️

How are we in April already?! 😲

Last Thursday on our woodland walk, the last day of March, we finally saw the bluebells flowering in the undergrowth, something we've been waiting for since we saw the first shoots in January! We've failed miserably at growing rainbows (there's always next time!), and given ourselves funny feet by wearing shoes that are far too big! 😂

I've had the privilege of having my "toenails" painted by a 2yr old too 😆

What have you been getting up to recently?

Happy Mother's Day to all of the wonderful Mum's, Nan's, Grandma's and anyone else amazing enough to share a place in a child's heart on Mother's Day!

My little ones made their Mummy's unique handprint bouquets along with real sunflowers planted and ready to start finding the sunshine! They also hand decorated boxes showing their Mummy's just what they thought of them!

Keep shining everyone! ☺️❤️

I can't reveal the lovely creations the children have been busy making over the last week, as you can probably guess they are due to be gifted at the end of the week for Mother's Day!

So I thought I'd share an update on the Horse Chestnut that we planted last year in association with ReTreeing Ansley. We have loved and nurtured our little conker all winter (and by that I mean we stuck it outside and little hands have successfully not dug it up yet!), and we can now see it has sprouted! Yay! 🥰🥰

The weeks are just flying by!

We celebrated World Book Day with lots of stories and dressing up as different characters; we've been to our group, to the park, walked through the woods, seen how many sticks we can get to stand up in a pile of mud, made funny footprints, sung with our robin, and much much more! We've finished off our week making some bird feeders for the garden!

Have a lovely weekend 😊 xx

Such a lovely end to a busy week! We had an indoor picnic in the hall when we went to sort the toys for group (and had an epic time playing with them all!), made some cress heads (still waiting for them to grow!), splashed in every puddle and squelched in all the mud in the woods (that made some great noises!), and today we've been to Hoar Park to see and feed the animals!

Time flies when you're having fun! 🥰🥰

Happy Monday or should I say, Happy Valentine's Day! ❤️

We've been prepping all week and come out with some lovely valentine's things to take home! Cards, crafts and biscuits!
Along with our usual woodland walk, visit to Perkisound and group on Weds we've been very busy this week!

I hope you've all had a lovely weekend filled with love 🥰🥰🥰

What a jam packed week we've had here at Karen's Childminding!

We started by baking blueberry muffins, and we've since been to group, taken a woodland walk and then visited a new place called Perkisound with our childminder friends!

We've loved every minute of it, eating the muffins, finding our robin friend again and experiencing new things! Time to relax now! I hope you all have fantastic weekend plans!

Even chillier this morning for our woodland walk! We got to see how much the shoots had grown in the woods, and we counted the dogs this week, although we only saw 4! We did have this lovely Robin join us for our snack though, waiting patiently for us to drop some! 😂😍

What a beautiful crisp morning for a walk! The sun gave us all big shadows so we had fun seeing what we could do with them!

Then we went to the woods where we saw lots of dogs, a couple of squirrels, squelched in mud, used sticks to listen for water and found new shoots growing! We are looking forward to seeing these change each time we go back!

Lovely day! 😊😊

How many children can you fit in a single puddle, or a single cardboard box? 😂😂

I've had a brilliant first two days back, splashing in puddles and going to the park yesterday, while we started back at group and had fun with a giant cardboard box today!

How has everyone else's start to the year been?

Happy New Year everyone! I'm so excited for the year ahead! We especially can't wait to return to our Weds Stay and Play session at Shustoke! With any luck we'll see you there! # # #

What a lovely end to the year! It's been nice to have my after-schoolies during the day, going to different parks, making our own cinema to enjoy Christmas movies in, more crafts and reindeer food! To top it off, everyone shared presents and has been singing Christmas songs! 😊

I'm signing off now to spend some time with my own children over the holidays, and to await the arrival of the big man in red! I shall be back again from the 4th January ready for another year of excitement and mayhem!

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all ❤️❤️❤️ # #

Happy Monday people! We were lucky enough to be gifted some play doh toys last week and we couldn't wait to try them out! Play doh is a brilliant activity that can incorporate all 7 Areas of Learning in one! But I'm sure Lola just thinks she's playing 😊

So proud of my children! We are Day 11 of the Arley and Ansley Big Local Living Advent Calendar, and the children worked so hard creating these wonderful crafts to go in the window. I think it looks amazing, well done guys! 😊😊

Day 11 of the Living Advent Calendar Window can be seen at 61 Charles Street, New Arley. Thank you for taking part.

Lovely quick Christmas craft after school today! Perfect for the Christmas tree 😊

I am pleased to announce I am once again running HAF sessions during the holidays! I'll be doing a range of activities from baking to crafts, dress up and winter walks, all sorts of fun and games!

My Christmas sessions run from 20th-23rd Dec, 9am-1pm (lunch included) so if you have your child's HAF code message me for a booking form 😊

Playgroup may not have gone ahead this morning but this didn't stop us getting out to the hall and having fun! We met our childminder friends and helped clean up some of the leaves around the paths using our perfectly sized litter pickers! Good fun playing in all the leaves we didn't pick up too! 😂😊

Phew! What a wonderful week full of fun we've had! The rain didn't stop us from getting out and about and exploring, finding new parks to test our physical abilities out on! We've also been exploring characters, dressing up and pretending to be all sorts of different people! And yes, we've even started the Christmas themed crafts! 🎄🎅🎁😁

Have a fabulous weekend everyone! 😊

Happy Friday!

We've put the last of our pumpkins to good use and have had a little play around with the insides, feeling the slimy seeds and stringy bits! The seeds have been roasted with smoked paprika - yum!

The rest of the Pumpkin, well! Half has gone into these lovely pumpkins pies, and the other joined some sweet potato and butternut squash to become our lunch of homemade soup! Just need to sprinkle the tops of the pies, once we've woken up from our well earned nap! Enjoy your weekend everyone! 😊

The play doh ALWAYS gets played with at our group session on a Weds! Another wonderful time, singing babies to sleep, using our fingers and hands to roll and shape play doh, sharing the instruments for song time and bouncing to our favourite songs!