Little lambs childminding

02/10/2026

A big thank you to Owl Adventures for today. Bright Buttons Childminding and ourselves enjoyed a lovely home visit with several birds - the children were encouraged to talk about their colours, what they eat and how high, low and even direction of flight! Each child was given the opportunity to hold the birds - for some this was a massive test of their confidence, and we even saw the Barn Owl fly to us each whilst inside the house!

A visit from a bird handler is not essential to the children’s learning or understanding of birds, as this can be supported through books, photographs, discussions, observations and other everyday experiences. However, as educators, we feel that opportunities such as a hands-on visit provide an exciting and valuable extension to the children’s learning. Being able to see and experience birds up close can help bring their learning to life, encourage curiosity and support meaningful conversations and questions.

We are proud to be able to work with parents which enables us to offer the children these additional experiences and opportunities to explore the world around them in a memorable and engaging way 🥰🦅

25/09/2026

18/09/2026

To support the children’s understanding of the world around them, and as part of our monthly theme of Great Britain, we explored our very own Yorkshire’s Stonehenge! 🪨🥰

The children explored the rocks, built with them, discovered caves and bridges, and had a go at creating their own Stonehenge, just like the Mr Men in our story. Many of the children became deeply engaged for long periods, constructing towers like little builders and using our homemade blackberry playdough as the “cement”. 🧱

Whilst I don’t expect the children to remember exactly what Stonehenge is, or to have a detailed knowledge of every place we explore, each experience is constantly adding to their repertoire of knowledge. We are building those foundations through repetition and real-life experiences, so that one day they may encounter something similar and think, “I remember this!”

So much learning happens naturally within these moments. Conversations such as:

💭 “Where is the cement?”
💭 “Why doesn’t it fall over?”
💭 “How can we make it stand up?”

These questions encourage children to think, problem-solve, experiment and develop early mathematical and engineering thinking. When they experimented with building towers from misshaped rocks, they were exploring balance, weight, shape, stability and cause and effect — all through play.

And then came the discovery of a cave… and naturally, we had to look for a bear! 🐻

But why a bear?

Because they remembered a story where there was a bear in a cave. ❤️

This is exactly why these experiences matter. The children may not fully understand what Stonehenge is today, and they may not remember this visit next week or next year. But every conversation, experience, story, question, experiment and connection is adding another little piece to their developing understanding of the world.

It is about building the foundations, making connections and giving children experiences to draw upon later.

And that, to me, is the magic of early years learning and one of the best parts of my role as a childminder — watching all of these little moments come together over time to create something much bigger: growth, understanding, curiosity and learning. ✨

16/09/2026

Today we enjoyed Forest School in the sunshine, making the most of the natural environment around us. The children explored painting with berries, using natural materials to create marks and patterns. This provided opportunities to explore colour, texture and creativity while developing an appreciation of the resources found in nature.

One child became interested in tipping water over a rock. Rather than moving on from this activity, we followed their curiosity and explored what happened to the water as it travelled over the rock and along the ground. This led to noticing a small stream and created an opportunity to investigate how water moves.

We then experimented with placing a leaf into the stream and watching it travel along with the flowing water. The children observed the direction and speed of the leaf, noticing how the water carried it along. We could extend this further by encouraging children to find different natural objects and predict which ones might float, sink or travel fastest in the stream but for today - this is what grabbed the child’s interest.

These experiences supported curiosity, observation, problem-solving and early scientific thinking, while allowing the children to lead their own learning through exploration and discovery.

A fab range of opportunities from Hookstone Forest Leader 🥰

16/09/2026

Our first garden harvest was of Rashida! 🫜

14/09/2026

🍎🍂 Messy Monday! 🍂🍎

This morning, the children enjoyed a leisurely stroll through the woods whilst collecting autumn treasures. We then put our treasures to good use on our Apple Heads! 🍎

The children mixed mud with their bare hands to create a paste before carefully adding their collected treasures, creating some gloriously happy Annabelle Apple stick heads! 🥰🍂

This afternoon, whilst exploring the different play set-ups, the children stumbled across the volcano. Intrigued and curious about how it worked, we had a little chat before getting stuck into some fizzy apple pictures! 🍎🌋

The children listened carefully to the fizzing sounds and watched as bubbles appeared across their paintings. The activity then naturally evolved into singing “5 Sizzling Sausages”, using the frying pan and play sausages. 🎶🌭🥰

A fantastic, fun-filled and very messy Monday was had by all! ❤️

10/09/2026

Settling into the first week of term and exploring the Autumnal changes around us 🍂🍁

12/08/2026

Making memories with the summer time crew 🥰