Tots and Tales Childcare

🦖 Dinosaurs 🦕
It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted but what a couple of weeks it’s been! We began our new dinosaurs topic and so far we’ve sorted dinosaurs by size, found dinosaur stories at the library and read them, used masks for dinosaur role play, watched dinosaurs on tv, practised saying tricky dinosaur names and tapping out their syllables, matched Dino names with their initial sounds, looked at herbivores and carnivores and made veggie Dino soup, strengthened our fingers and practised continuing patterns making peg spikes, compared objects in size with our Dino footprints, made shape dinosaurs, playdoh fossils and colour mixed to decorate different footprints!

And on top of that we’ve had a cafe lunch, had lots of fun at gymnastics and swimming, bounced on the trampoline, played playmobil, baked birthday cakes, had a birthday treasure hunt and party tea!! No wonder we’re exhausted by Thursday!!

First week in our new routine now the Tots are settled into their morning nursery session. First swimming lesson, jigsaws, recognising the initial sound in words, pencil control, storytime with friends, gymnastics, fun building sentences to describe what we can see in the mirror, biscuit decorating..still a lot of fun and learning squeezed in around the daily 3 hours in Nursery!

Continuing our “All about me” topic this week thinking about feelings in our hospital and with our feelings stones, building our houses out of Duplo, making roasted pepper and carrot soup to keep our bodies healthy and practising some pen control drawing funny faces on photos of all of the Tots. We’ve also had fun in the park and garden, enjoyed the September sunshine finding the sundial and played snakes and ladders!

WE’RE BACK!!! And what a busy first week we’ve had! As well as both little Tots settling into school Nursery we’ve begun our ‘All about Me’ topic. We’ve practised writing our names, used the dice to answer questions about our favourite things, looked at our finger prints, drawn pictures of each other and painted rocks ready to think about how we feel. All of this as well as trips to the Rising Sun, library and cafe and park!! Roll on week 2!

Scooting, chopping, mixing, bubbling, jumping, pizza-making, splashing, spinning, climbing, snacking and chasing into summer!! Wishing all of the Tots and their families a wonderful summer holidays!! See you all in September! ☀️ 🏖

Was a bit of a strange week last week with breaks for Covid testing, luckily all negative, but we soldiered on and spent a lot of time building up those fine motor muscles which will help us to become beautiful writers in the future. We also paid attention to detail, discussing changes we could see and explaining why we thought they happened. We re-enacted traditional tales and then enjoyed “reading” them ourselves and had lots of fun in the mud kitchen trying out the new recipe cards from our friends at Little Wood Walkers

After forgetting to post last week there is so much that I could post to show all that we got up to in the last 7 Tots’ days (we were one day down due to long overdue and needed grandparent time) that I’m just going to have to give a snapshot! So here goes:
👩‍👦‍👦 talking about long, short, straight and curved while building train tracks.
👩‍👦‍👦 caring for and watching our strawberry plants grow and change.
👩‍👦‍👦 visiting the Rising Sun
👩‍👦‍👦 making Father’s Day cards
👩‍👦‍👦 investigating things that are magnetic and practising our phonics sounds (in a few different ways!)
👩‍👦‍👦 having a wonderful time in the Tumble Gymnastics centre garden.
👩‍👦‍👦 practising pencil control
👩‍👦‍👦 building huge structures
👩‍👦‍👦 stick ball
👩‍👦‍👦 kinetic sand
👩‍👦‍👦 safety around fires and roasting marshmallows.
👩‍👦‍👦 charcoal mark making
👩‍👦‍👦 LOTS of imaginative play in the garden involving water, including building up those fine motor muscles with the water guns.
👩‍👦‍👦 exploring the idea that books can provide information as well as stories.

This week has been very much about enjoying the wonderful weather! We’ve barely been inside but have still managed some pencil control, experimenting with floating and sinking, phonics practice, healthy eating discussion making fruit smoothie lollies and plenty of water play!

Been away for a long awaited weekend with my parents! A wonderful way to relax after another busy week where, amongst other things, we practised our sounds and went on a sound hunt, competed one of the trails in the little wood walkers book for the Rising Sun, baked a birthday brownie cake, did a birthday treasure hunt, practised fine motor skills on the Tuff tray, built a birthday den and fire and toasted marshmallows, bought plants for the garden and planted them.

It’s been an incredibly busy weekend at Tots HQ moving 2 of my boys into their own rooms so my apologies for the lateness of the weekly update! What another funfilled week we’ve had!!

I-spy the ‘h’ sound, number recognition at the mini skate park, trampoline snacks, making lunch, baby geese, alpacas and pigs, comparing dandelion lengths, adult and baby animal sand and water play, magic potion making, happy land and cheesy garlic moons and stars to celebrate Eid!

The shortened week passed by in a blur..hence the Saturday update!! We enjoyed puddle jumping, hook a duck, counting with nine ducks nine, fun at the park and dandelion blowing, colouring, smelly wellies, sorting the recycling, visiting the cruise ship and boats at the marina and pizza making!

Another week bites the dust!! And what a jam packed week it’s been..again!

We’ve made birthday cards and presents; helped prepare lots of snacks and lunches including folded pizza wraps and vegetable soup; practised our letter sounds: had fun in the park, fed the ducks and found the mosaic posts hidden in the trees; released our butterflies, helped deliver leaflets ready for the next “tin on a wall” collection; painted with chalk; jumped in puddles, played some number and phonics games on the iPads and practised our number recognition with a speed limit game.