Karen Hawens Childminding

Today the children will be exploring butterflies through a fun and interactive activity! 🦋
By moving the paper to create air movement, they will discover how the butterflies flutter and move. This will introduce early scientific concepts such as cause and effect, movement and forces, while also developing fine motor skills, coordination and curiosity about the world around them.
A wonderful way to explore, investigate and learn through play in line with the EYFS curriculum.

Today the children will be rescuing insects from the spiders' sticky webs! 🕷️🐞
As they carefully pull the insects free, they will be developing fine motor skills, hand strength and coordination. We'll also be counting the legs on the spiders and insects, encouraging mathematical thinking, observation skills and discussions about the different creatures we might find in the garden.
A fun, hands-on activity that supports communication and language, maths, understanding the world and physical development through play, in line with the EYFS curriculum.

We had a lovely morning with the park ranger exploring the woods and pond with all our friends. The children enjoyed searching for insects and other wildlife, learning about the creatures that live in their natural habitats. A wonderful outdoor adventure full of curiosity, discovery and hands-on learning! 🦋🐸🌿

The children had great fun playing Kim's Game today! Kim's Game is a memory game where children look carefully at a selection of objects and then try to remember what they have seen. Once they had mastered that, we made it even trickier by hiding one of the animals and asking them to guess which one was missing. A fantastic activity for developing memory, concentration, observation skills, and language development. 🐘🦁🐻

🦋 The children loved discovering the butterflies hidden inside their chrysalises today! They carefully ripped open the paper to reveal the butterflies inside, just like a real butterfly emerging.
This fun activity helped to strengthen hand muscles, develop grip strength, improve fine motor skills and encourage hand-eye coordination, all while learning about the butterfly life cycle. 🦋✨

🦋 Today the children had lots of fun exploring butterfly pasta! They coloured the pasta in different colours, counted how many they had, weighed them on the scales and compared different amounts.
Along the way they developed number recognition, counting skills, measuring and weighing, explored capacity, and practised pencil control and hand-eye coordination. A lovely hands-on way to learn through play! 🦋✨

The children enjoyed some garden fun today! 🌦️ When the rain arrived, we came inside for shelter, then headed back out once it had passed. Before playing, the children helped to dry the toys with cloths, showing great teamwork and developing their independence and responsibility. Lots of outdoor fun, exploration and fresh air followed! 🌿☀️

Our individual activity trays are a great way to support independent learning for children who no longer nap in the afternoon. The children choose one tray at a time, exploring a variety of activities that encourage problem-solving, concentration, creativity, fine motor skills and confidence. Choosing their own tray helps develop decision-making skills while learning through play at their own pace. 🌟

🐛 Caterpillar craft fun! 🐛
The children enjoyed developing their scissor skills today as they carefully cut out legs for their caterpillars. We counted the legs and eyes together, practising our early maths skills, and talked about the initial letter of each child's name. The children then added their own drawings and marks to personalise their caterpillars, encouraging creativity and fine motor development.
A lovely activity combining creativity, early literacy, maths and hand strength! ✂️🎨🐛
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🚗 Parking, ramps and number fun! 🚗
Today the children explored cars, ramps and parking spaces while developing lots of early learning skills. They investigated how changing the height of the ramps affected speed, discovering which cars went fast and which went slow. They practised number recognition by matching numbered cars to the correct numbered parking spaces.
Along the way, we talked about the word parking, recognising the initial "P" sound, developed problem-solving skills, hand-eye coordination, prediction skills, and used mathematical language such as higher, lower, faster, slower, more and less. Lots of learning through play! 🚙🔢