Cheeky Chimps Childminding with Sam Littlejohns and Maxine Ellis

EYFS risk assessments for parks focus on identifying hazards—such as broken glass, dog fouling, faulty equipment, and traffic—to ensure safety while supporting outdoor play. Key measures include regular, recorded checks of equipment, high supervision ratios, and establishing clear boundaries for children, aligning with EYFS requirements for safe, accessible outdoor

Every Thursday the chimps go swimming.

Fundamental Skills: Focus on learning to kick, float, and eventually swim independently, often avoiding armbands to promote natural buoyancy.
Health Benefits: Beyond safety, swimming improves physical coordination, cognitive development, and social skills.
Fun and Bonding: Using songs, toys, and games makes the experience enjoyable, strengthening the bond between child and childminder.

Building on memories in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) enhances learning by connecting new experiences to prior knowledge, promoting cognitive development, and fostering a sense of self.

The enclosing schema is a common, innate cognitive pattern in young children where they create boundaries, borders, or containers to surround themselves or objects. It reflects a desire for security, control, and understanding of spatial relationships.

After a recent birthday this chimp decided everything is a present!!

Fantastic Loose Parts Play Ideas - Early Impact Learning
Loose parts are versatile, open-ended materials—natural or man-made—that children use to explore texture, shape, and pattern, fostering cognitive and sensory development. By touching, arranging, and manipulating items like shells, fabric, or bark, children enhance fine motor skills, build language, and learn about the world, adhering to EYFS principles of play-based learning.

Donate to Reggi and his family, organized by Samantha Littlejohns Hi we are Sam and Maxine and we have the absolute privilege of being childminders for Reggi … Samantha Littlejohns needs your support for Reggi and his family

Open-ended play in the EYFS is child-led, unstructured activity with no predetermined outcome, allowing children to use imagination and, crucially,, explore processes using "loose parts" like blocks, fabric, or natural materials. It supports all seven areas of learning by promoting creativity, critical thinking, and independence without fear of failure.

Give the chimps a box of random straws and the imagination flourishes. Colour, numbers, patterns and shapes all being discussed while they challenge themselves to make longer and bigger structures. All engaged in play but the learning is happening naturally with support from each other!!
A pleasure to observe (while managing to drink a hot cup of coffee!!!)

With all the chimps coming in today and talking about the freezing weather and snow and ice we followed their interests and decided on ice play.

So much opportunity for exploring and talking and observing!!

Sensory Exploration: Provide ice, salt, containers, and tools for free play, encouraging observation of cracking, melting, and changing states (solid to liquid). Also encouraging fine motor skills with tweezers and spoons.

Key Learning Points for Children
Science: Salt lowers the freezing point of water, making ice melt faster.
Vocabulary: Introduce words like freeze, melt, solid, liquid, temperature, predict.

Skills: Communication, teamwork, observation, estimation, and problem-solving.

Had a lovely morning at bubbles soft play with the chimps thanks to a kind donation of free entry tickets!!!!

It’s the process not the product that matters.

THIS is the PROCESS. This is the LEARNING.

The objective when providing art materials to young children is for them to explore, experiment, and discover. To let them PLAY with the materials, just like they play with blocks, fabrics, and other materials.

The LESS we do, the MORE they do.

We need to stop putting emphasize on how something looks, but rather, focus on their experience that interconnects and fuels all domains of development.

Even when children are older and more developmentally capable of creating recognizable pieces of art, we still need to step back and LET THEM FIGURE OUT how to create something.

Our need to over-instruct and direct removes opportunities for creative and critical thinking. We more-so need to step back and provide the conditions and opportunities for these experiences to exist.

Frost and snow play (yes I bashed my freezers !!)
Can we melt the snow to find and identify the numbers?
What does it feel like?
What happens when we put warm water on the snow?

So many questions and so much language and exploration and PLAY

Some recent meals and activities and new resources!!