Karen Hawens Childminding

This week was a short one as we've now broken up for the summer holidays! ☀️ We had just two fun-filled days together. Yesterday we enjoyed a trip to the park with our friends, and today we finished the term with our Sports Day! 🏃‍♀️🏅
The children had so much fun taking part in all the different races and challenges, including the egg and spoon race, sprint, weaving around cones with a ball, hurdle race, stepping stones, and throwing beanbags into hoops.
There was lots of running, fantastic listening skills and, I think most importantly, laughter! The children followed instructions so well and all tried their very best.
To finish the morning, every child was presented with a certificate, a medal, and a trophy to celebrate all of their hard work and effort. Im so proud of every single one of them! 💛

The children have loved the last two days exploring water play! 💦 They've been tipping and pouring, washing the dolls, measuring water, and squeezing sponges to strengthen their fine motor skills. They also had great fun in the garden, watching the water flow along the guttering and experimenting with how it moved. So much learning through play while keeping cool in the sunshine! ☀️😊

The children will be exploring magnets, discovering what they stick to and using them to create their own magnetic displays. They'll be developing their hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills and problem-solving as they experiment.
To add an extra challenge, they'll use water squirters to try and spray the magnets off the metal poles, encouraging aim, control and plenty of laughter while strengthening their hand muscles.

The children will enjoy some water play, washing the dolls and their clothes before pe***ng everything out to dry. They will also have fun squeezing out sponges, pouring water and exploring different containers.
These activities will help develop fine motor skills and hand strength, supporting future pencil control. The children will also explore pouring and capacity, while enjoying imaginative role play as they care for the dolls. A fun, hands-on activity with lots of learning opportunities!

We enjoyed some lovely calm, quiet activities today. The children had great fun playing Bug Bingo and The Gruffalo matching pairs, practising turn-taking, concentration and memory skills. We also got creative using water pens, revealing colourful pictures as we painted. A wonderful mix of learning, laughter and fun! 🐞🎨

We've had another lovely week of fun and learning! 🐞🌿
The children enjoyed a nature walk searching for mini beasts, shared our Mini Beast and Gruffalo stories, explored the garden, sang lots of nursery rhymes, danced together, and had a great time at playgroup. It's been a week full of smiles, imagination, and outdoor adventures! 💚

🐞🕷️ This week we'll be continuing to explore minibeasts! 🦋🐌
We'll be sharing the lovely story Mad About Minibeasts! before exploring lots of different insects and spiders through play. The children can dress up with our fun minibeast masks, act out how different creatures move, and discover how they use their bodies.
We'll also be introducing lots of exciting new vocabulary, including crawl, creep, slither, wriggle, scuttle, flutter, buzz, and hover, helping to build language while having lots of fun.
We can't wait to see where our minibeast investigations take us this week! 🌿🐛

Forgot I'd borrowed the Gruffalo story sack from the toy library! 🐭🌲🦉
As The Gruffalo has been such a popular topic recently, we'll be enjoying lots of Gruffalo-themed fun next week with the story, soft toy, puzzle and memory game. The children are going to love it! 💚📚

This morning the children had lots of fun enjoying water play, splashing, pouring and exploring while keeping nice and cool.
In the afternoon, we headed into our air-conditioned conservatory for some AquaDraw mark making. Using water-filled pens, the children practised making lines, shapes and patterns, helping to develop their early writing skills, hand-eye coordination and fine motor control—all while staying cool and having fun! 💙🖍️🌊