Kerry's Childcare

Gressenhall farm and museum is one of our favourite places to visit. We were very lucky to be able to pet and feed lots of the animals today along with a tractor ride around the farm. We used journey cards (sticky tape on a card) to encourage engaging with nature and it creates a story to tell.
I love being able to offer these trips to the children.
*Parents/carers are not charged for outings*

Every week is different here. In the last week, we have celebrated a little one turning 2 with a party day; we went on a bus to the castle museum (the bus ride was a special request); we have baked; made bird feeders and mud pies; we visited our groups, story cafe, library and parks. The children have planned what they are buying at the garden centre next week to grow our own herbs, vegetable and fruit and I’ve had a request for another visit to the museum as they enjoyed it so much!

“Rain, rain, come and play”
The children were disappointed with the puddles in the garden so we filled a tuff tray to splash in!

National storytelling week so the house has been set up as a storytelling resource station. We have had lots of lovely books and stories shared and acted out. The storytelling bean bags are wonderful for prompting ideas 💕 Our story of the day was paper dolls and we created our own; focusing on details and talking about our characters and their stories.

High Lodge, Thetford forest has a new activity trail for ‘Room on the broom’.
This is one of the children’s favourite stories so we have has some themed activities this week and a day trip to High Lodge. We completed the trail, played on the park areas, collected some natural resources, enjoyed a picnic and completed the Gruffalo trail too.

We had some magic (or just an amazing coincidence) this week!! I set up a witch’s spell station and the children chose to turn me and everything around us into a frog and then we found a frog in the garden!!!! How cool!!! 🐸 ✨
We have explored some different ways to play with pumpkins this week; scooping and cleaning, carving, painting and hammering golf tees and sticks in!!
Whitlingham lake hosts a Halloween trail each year and it’s just lovely. Exploring the trail and woods, watching the lake and a lovely rhyme and story session. The children won a medal and some sweets for counting the pumpkins on the trail. Lovely and free too!
Role-play areas this week was pirate ship and baby role-play. The giant colour in pirate ship and other role-play are only £10 in Hobbycraft right now!

A focus on Diwali, the festival of lights. We have been using non-fiction books to understand the festival, exploring the story of Rama and Sita, Diwali yoga, creating Rangoli patterns, making our own hand art with dot painting and making diya lamps.

We made salt dough to create our own diya lamps. We had a lot left over so imprinted some dinosaurs as very popular with the children at this time. This was great fun as we buried them in the sandpit and excavated them and matched them to the dinosaurs.
Another child is very passionate about cars so one day, the play area was set up as a car shop and track day 😊

We have been learning about Autumn. A beautiful season that children can explore with all their senses. Yesterday, we visited the Norfolk showground nature trail. We observed nature, completed a scavenger hunt, kicked and played in leaves, created art, climbed a tree, danced in bubbles, created tree rubbings, looked at size, shape and number while collecting resources for our crafts and investigation stations, had lots of fun and earned a good night’s sleep (3.8km!!) I wish I could show their faces as they are so full of joy!
Today, we made wands with some of the resources we collected and painted hedgehogs with forks and were able to remember the sign for hedgehog 💕
Love this season!

We welcomed a new starter today and they settled in beautifully. The children had a lovely day of exploring light and colours with different resources and visiting the library to collect certificates for completing our reading challenge.

Finished work and had some family time. Then cleaned up the playroom and prepped for tomorrow, completed some paperwork and just finished prepping overnight weetabix, coleslaw and marinating jerk chicken ready for tomorrow. Always on the go!!

A beautiful day for a gruffalo hunt! Every trip to High Lodge is different. Today we searched for the gruffalo’s child and characters; we made learning journey crowns, went on minibeast and leaf hunts using our microscopes and binoculars; drew in the mud with sticks; pressed flowers in our magnetic bricks and played on lots of park areas.
We sang “we going on a gruffalo hunt, we’re going to find a big one! We’re not scared…..we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it-we have to go through it!!”

We absolutely love to visit High Lodge, Thetford Forest - Forestry England

We played with vehicles in cornflour play this morning so that we had lots to go in our car wash outside. We also had a well loved, natural resources station where food and art were created. I have had to eat lots of flower soup/tea today! The knives used were child safety knives so would not cut the child but were great at cutting our resources.
The children use chalk on the walls and then the water squirters to wash it off, along with soaking everything else. These have been very popular!
Our fruits and vegetables are growing well and the children are very excited their sunflowers are getting taller! 🌻
A lovely day ☀️

Kerry's Childcare has moved to Queens Hills, Costessey