Nicky Burnett Childminding

🌍 International Day of Play 🌍

Play is often described as the work of childhood, and for good reason!!
Through play, children learn, explore, problem-solve, develop language, build friendships, gain confidence and make sense of the world around them.

At my setting, play is at the heart of everything we do. Rather than rushing from one planned activity to the next, I follow children's interests and curiosity, allowing meaningful learning opportunities to unfold naturally.

Today we revisited the tadpoles at the park and were amazed at how much they had grown since our last visit. Some now have legs and are getting ready to transform into frogs! The children were fascinated and my oldest boy asked lots of questions about the life cycle, helping to develop their understanding of the natural world.

Our adventure continued with tree climbing, running races and flower picking. These simple moments provided opportunities to build physical strength, coordination, resilience, confidence and communication skills.

To extend the children's learning, my 4-year-old was encouraged to think more deeply about the changes we observed in the tadpoles.
We discussed the different stages of the frog life cycle, compared what we saw today with our previous visit, predicted what might happen next and talked about why these changes occur. This helped develop observation skills, critical thinking, vocabulary and scientific understanding.

Today was a perfect reminder that some of the richest learning happens when children are free to play, explore and follow their own interests!

And will shout this from the roof tops time and time again!

Rainy days don't stop the learning ☔️💧

Today we became little weather scientists and set out our rain catchers to see how much rain we could collect.

The children chose different containers and made predictions about which would collect the most water. Throughout the couple of hours when it rained heavily this morning we checked, compared and talked about what we could see.

For my oldest child, I extended the activity by encouraging them to make predictions, compare amounts and think about why some containers collected more rain than others.
We also used language such as more, less, full, empty and measured the water collected.

My younger children explored cause and effect, developed their understanding of weather, practised new vocabulary and used their observation skills as they watched the rain fill the containers. They loved pouring, comparing and talking about what they noticed.

A simple activity that supported communication and language, early maths, understanding the world and lots of curiosity!

Today we enjoyed a lovely indoor Teddy Bears' Picnic and some biscuit baking!

The children had great fun making their biscuits, measuring ingredients, mixing, rolling and making shapes before enjoying them at our picnic with their favourite teddy bears and soft toys!

Through this activity the children developed:
✨ Fine motor skills through mixing, rolling and decorating
✨ Early maths skills by measuring and counting ingredients
✨ Language and communication through conversations about the baking process
✨ Following instructions and turn-taking
✨ Creativity and independence while making their own biscuits
✨ Confidence and a sense of achievement from creating something themselves

Learning through play is always more meaningful when it's fun, and today's activities were full of smiles and imagination

Today the children collected beautiful rose petals from the garden and explored how they could transform them into their very own rose water!

Using different containers, water, spoons, whisks and mashers, they mixed, squashed and stirred the petals, observing how the water changed colour and scent as they worked.

This simple sensory activity supported so many areas of learning:

✨ Exploring nature and the world around them
✨ Developing fine motor skills through squeezing, mixing and pouring
✨ Building language skills as they described textures, colours and smells
✨ Encouraging creativity, imagination and curiosity
✨ Introducing early scientific thinking through experimenting and observing changes

The children were fully engaged, using all their senses to investigate and create. Learning through play at its best!

Today we enjoyed a trip to the garden centre to choose a strawberry plant for our garden. The children helped pick a healthy plant and were very interested in learning how to look after it.

We spoke to one of the gardeners, who explained that strawberry plants need plenty of sunshine and regular watering to help them grow. The children listened carefully and were excited to learn how we can help our plant thrive.

We also discovered that strawberries grow where the flowers are. We were delighted to spot a tiny strawberry already beginning to form! We talked about how the strawberries will start off green, then gradually turn red as they ripen in the sunshine, ready for us to pick and taste.

This was a lovely opportunity to learn about plant growth, caring for living things and where our food comes from. We are looking forward to watching our strawberry plant grow over the coming weeks!!

Today, our 4-year-old enjoyed exploring a basket of wooden letters and numbers.

He carefully searched through the letters to find the ones needed to spell his name, talking about the sounds and shapes he recognised along the way. He was so proud when he found them all and put them in the correct order!

He also explored the numbers, finding matching pairs and sorting them into groups. As he played, we talked about number recognition, counting and comparing quantities.

Simple activities like this provide wonderful opportunities to develop early literacy and maths skills while following a child's own interests and curiosity.

Learning is always more meaningful when it's hands-on, playful and fun!

The children were delighted this morning to discover that 2 of our caterpillars have turned into butterflies!!!

Exactly how a hot Summer Wednesday morning should look when you are little ❤️🌞

Today was definitely too hot for our original plans… so we abandoned the little sports day and got the water out instead!

The children loved being sprayed with the hosepipe and then decided the flowers needed a drink too!
We talked about how plants need water and sunshine to grow tall and strong.

Then the children pretended to be tiny seeds in the ground, crouching down low before slowly growing taller and taller, stretching their arms up high into the sky like beautiful flowers

We explored different sized and shaped containers, comparing:
✨ full and empty
✨ heavy and light
✨ wet and dry

The children poured, filled, splashed and experimented with which containers held the most water and which felt heaviest to carry.

For my older children, we extended the learning by estimating which container would hold more or less before filling them, comparing sizes, counting how many small cups filled a larger jug and introducing language like:
“bigger”
“smaller”
“more”
“less”
“half full”
“nearly empty”

So much learning through simple play