Hedgehogs Childminding Services

It’s been 10 years since we started our childcare journey, and now the time has come to close our doors. Our last day will be 21st July.
A huge thank you to all our families for their support over the years. ❤️

Painting fun this week allowed children to look at colour mixing, cause and effect and feeling textures. 🎨

We also spent a lot of time outdoors and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Sand and water provided endless fascination, exploring the effect of adding water to dry sand, transporting resources across outdoor space with care and intention.

The plants were alive with insects soooo many bees. 🐝

As always our conversations covered a huge range of topics, from why does ice melt to where do butterflies come from? By us asking these questions children can consider the world around them and even when their answers may be incorrect it provides enlightenment to us as practitioners as to how they see things. A very interesting and varied week that’s for sure ❤️🦔 ☀️

Last week it was all about Bears!

🐻 we focussed on “We’re going on a bear hunt” which has fab repetition that the children can join in with.

🐻 we went out own bear hunt on the local park finding numbered bears. This helped with turn taking, number order and numeral recognition

🐻 we used chocolate fondant to make models feeel textures and smell scents. It was lush 😋

🐻 we had a teddy bears picnic with our teddies from home. First we fed them then had our own picnic! Sharing is caring!

We have been really busy the last couple of weeks with St Patrick’s Day activities, visiting the local park and enjoying our outdoor area. The sandpit has been used extensively this week making sandcastles and ice creams, as well as using diggers and tractors in a mini building site! So many opportunities to use fine motor skills, extend language and learn about the natural world around us.

This week we continued to follow our children’s interests by using a favourite story “Goldilocks and The Three Bears” as our theme.

🐻 We explored the texture of oats in the tuff tray and used utensils to scoop and pour

🐻 We looked at comparative size and counted to 3 using our digits to represent numbers

🐻 We enjoyed crafting using scissors to snip and drawing around hands. We used lots of colours this week!!

🐻 We used the story to talk about feelings and discuss kind behaviour like sharing

🐻 We used hand eye co ordination and followed instructions to make our delicious “bear toast”.

We also spent time outside exploring the garden area finding MininBeasts and enjoying the changed in the weather. We are also enjoying new home baked goods as part of expanding our Vegan repertoire.

❤️ 🦔 ❤️ Keeping things simple ❤️🦔❤️

Children need to feel secure before they can learn - they need to know they will have their needs met and that you are there to validate their feelings (not fix them). This is really important in early years care generally but is even more so when you are settling children back in from a holiday or illness, when they are new to the setting or if they have had significant changes in their world.

This means that sometimes we won’t have fancy pictures of themed activities to share with parents or on Facebook. Because we will be using the familiar toys, games and activities to ground children and make them feel secure. They will have been busy, learning new things through exploring the familiar, consolidating their knowledge and getting ready for the next phase.

We have spent some time since returning from the Xmas break settling children back in and doing lots of fun bird related activities. It’s the this weekend if you want to join in and provide the RSPB with information about our beautiful native bird population. RSPB England

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2022 filled with joy. Looking forward to seeing families old and new very soon ❤️

Happy Christmas and best wishes for 2022, to all our families past and present 💝 🎄 🎅

Christmas is such an amazing time of year and we spent many sessions dancing, reading books, singing songs, meeting our friends from Sunny Starts Childminding, making Xmas themed treats, feeding the birds, playing with scented playdoh and having our Christmas lunch.

Now it’s time to break up for the holidays and for everyone to have some wonderful family time. Thank you so much for your wonderful well wishes, cards and presents after such a difficult year for everyone. Have an amazing Christmas and best wishes for the new year. 🎅 🎄 🎉 🎁 🎈

https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/11/product-recall-halfords-i-size-revolve-car-seat/

Product recall: Halfords i-Size Revolve car seat – Which? News The retailer Halfords is asking people to stop using the i-Size Revolve car seat immediately and return it to store due to issues identified with the locking mechanism on the rotation system.

We have had some interesting activities surrounding Road Safety Week. We talked about being safe whilst out and about and had a trip into Holmfirth using pedestrian crossings, holding hands nicely and had a trip on a bus too! We took some books out of the library, adding to our set of vehicle based resources.

We used traffic lights as a way of providing lots of learning opportunities from new vocabulary like “amber” to cookery skills scooping, cutting and being gentle with ingredients. Our little people know that green means go and red means stop too!! 🚦 ❤️😀