Fox Den Childcare

Fox Den Childcare Play, learn and explore at Fox Den Childcare🦊

Here at Fox Den Childcare, we have adopted the Hygge way of living and we are also members of the Forest Childcare Association, encouraging play and learning outdoors. We are a cosy home from home setting where the children are provided a comfortable and engaging environment to play, explore and learn. Utilising an inviting indoor space and a safe and clean garden area alongside local parks and attractions, we are able to offer a wide variety of experiences and challenges for the children at Fox Den. The Curiosity Approach and Montessori are some of the themes we have laced throughout the setting which are designed to ignite the children's natural curiosity and imagination and encourage them to make creative choices in their learning. At Fox Den, we are very lucky to have a safe and inviting outdoor area which is freely accessible via our indoor space, as well as being surrounded on 3 sides by local parks, gardens and nature reserves. We believe the outdoors is so important as it allows children to develop self-confidence, independence and self-esteem. Here at the Fox den, we use our outdoor spaces to plant, nurture and eat our own fruit and vegetables, feed and recognise various native wildlife and of course, run, climb and SHOUT!

👻 S P O O K Y S E A S O N 👻The cabin has had a little not-so-spooky makeover over the weekend and we love how cosy an...
04/10/2026

👻 S P O O K Y S E A S O N 👻

The cabin has had a little not-so-spooky makeover over the weekend and we love how cosy and magical it feels! ✨

We always start Halloween early because we have so many fun activities planned, including crafts, exploring sensory play and playdough, reading spooky stories and engaging in imaginative play.

We love this time of year because Halloween gives us such a lovely, natural way to talk about our emotions.
Through gentle, age-appropriate play, we can explore feelings like happy, excited, surprised, worried and scared, helping children to recognise and talk about their emotions in a safe, familiar environment.
This week our story focus will be The Gruffalo which is a familiar story for our children and gives us a base to gently explore fear.

Most importantly, our Halloween season will be filled with warmth, imagination, curiosity and laughter.

We can't wait to see everyones little excited faces when they discover all the spooky surprises waiting for them! 🧡

Pumpkin week awaits!! 🎃

😄 F A C E S 😄Faces. We all have them, and they are key in communicating our emotions with each other. This week we hav...
02/10/2026

😄 F A C E S 😄

Faces. We all have them, and they are key in communicating our emotions with each other.

This week we have been looking at faces, lots of faces!
We have been exploring our facial features, naming them, (poking Danielle in the eye), and comparing them to drawings, different animals and each other.

We have made some very silly faces while looking in the mirror as we try to move different parts of our faces, and we have noticed that when we move certain parts of our face, it can make us look happy, sad and surprised!

The children have explored facial features and emotions through a range of resources including our Mr and Mrs potato heads, some slimy oobleck and lots of different mark making tools.

Fidget the Wonder Dog has been an absolutely fantastic book to read and discuss this week as it takes you on a real rollercoaster of emotions, thankfully ending with happiness and love!

Alongside all of these wonderful activities, the children have also been noticing the changes in our natural world as autumn slowly draws in. We have particularly enjoyed finding conkers in the park and exploring the autumnal tray.
At the library this week we talked all about autumn and the wonder of trees and explored lots of natured autumn treasures! 🍂

🍽 A U T U M N M E N U 🍽Our Autumn Menu is now in full swing, and we’re delighted to say it’s already been a huge hit...
21/09/2026

🍽 A U T U M N M E N U 🍽

Our Autumn Menu is now in full swing, and we’re delighted to say it’s already been a huge hit!

Our menus are thoughtfully created to bring together a wide variety of foods, flavours and textures, while ensuring nutrition remains at the heart of every meal.

All of our meals are freshly homemade each week, using whole ingredients.

Here’s to a delicious Autumn season! 🍁

We're still here!We have taken a break from social media over the summer for 2 reasons. Firstly, we have had such a busy...
15/09/2026

We're still here!

We have taken a break from social media over the summer for 2 reasons.

Firstly, we have had such a busy fun filled summer!
We made the most of every second of sunshine with water play for days, picnics every week and plenty of birthday celebrations!

We met our newest little ones who spent some time settling in here and there over the summer, and they have settled in so quickly even amongst the craziness of the summer holidays!

We have said goodbye 🥺 (for now) to some of our not so little ones as they embark on their new and exciting adventures.

It's been a wonderful summer, and this week is the start of our new 'normal'.
A quiet week.
A slow week.
A week nothing like the last 8 weeks!
But a week that is definitely needed as relationships form and routines settle. 🧡

The second reason we have been quiet on social media recently is, unfortunately, not such a wholesome reason.

In our personal lives, we have made the decision to not post our own child on social media and, for the same reasons, we have chosen to not post any photos of children on our Fox Den social media either. So we just needed some time to reevaluate how and why we use our social media, and what this will look like going forward.

We plan to keep our social media updated with all of the wonderful experiences and adventures that we go on together and of course all of our parents will receive plenty of photos of their little ones in action!

🐦‍⬛ 🐦‍⬛We have had a blast during week one of our challenge. Our prompt for the week was 'Helping Wildlife Where I...
05/06/2026

🐦‍⬛ 🐦‍⬛

We have had a blast during week one of our challenge.

Our prompt for the week was 'Helping Wildlife Where I Live'.
During our Monday morning circle time, we talked about what we can do to help the wildlife in our local area and gardens.
We came up with some fantastic ideas which we have put into practice this week.

🐦‍⬛We visited our local park where we topped up all of our usual bird and squirrel feeding spots.
Seeing the children independently make their way around the well known spots and watching them independently take turns in placing the food was such a heartwarming way to start the week.

🏡We made sure all of our garden feeders and water baths were cleaned and filled daily with peanuts, seeds, suet, nibbled nuts and mealworm soup (soaked mealworms).
(Clean feeders and water baths are very important at the moment due to the spread of disease among wild birds).
Our garden wildlife cost us a small fortune 😅 but we are very greatful to have such lovely animals visit us everyday.

🥜We observed a squirrel using our peanut feeder for the very first time. (The feeder has been in place for 9 months and is constantly being emptied but we have never managed to witness a squirrel using it until this week!!)

🐸We had a surprise visit from a frog (another first for our garden) who came right up to the cabin door while we were watching the torrential rain on Tuesday morning.
We talked about if the frog might like it in the rain.

🏠 We have a few very tame House Sparrow families who live in and around our roof and they have had incredible success with their chick's this spring. We have watched their numbers multiply over the last few weeks as the fledglings have been coming out into the garden to feed. We have noticed some of them looking for gaps in our house and outbuildings, presumably because their nests are becoming overcrowded quickly! So we have installed 2 sparrow terraced houses which we hope they find useful as we would love to keep our Sparrow friends close by!
We are hoping to encourage some of the Blue Tit and Great Tit fledglings to take up future residence in our garden too by offering a number of appropriate bird houses in different sheltered locations.

🦋Over the spring we have loaded our raised flower beds with plenty of pollinators friendly flowers and herbs including some sacrificial nasturtiums which we hope will attract hundreds of caterpillars like they did last year!
We have also scattered thousands of wildflower seeds in our borders but by the look of the very few seedlings we have spotted, we think the birds found the seeds first!! 🤣
We have also added a little butterfly buffet to help the butterflies out while the flowers are still in the very early stages of blooming.

🍢We have researched different types of foods which are safe and nutritious for the birds in our garden and were surprised at what we found out!
The children used this knowledge to build their very own bird treat kebabs which we have placed around the garden. The blackbirds and starlings seemed to thoroughly enjoy their special treats!
They looked so delicious that we also had to make some for ourselves too!

We look forward to next weeks prompt. 'Discover Wildlife With My Senses'

🌍 W I L D L I F E 🌍How are you getting WILD this June? is a month long nature challenge founded by the Wildlife Trust...
26/05/2026

🌍 W I L D L I F E 🌍

How are you getting WILD this June?

is a month long nature challenge founded by the Wildlife Trusts to encourage us to step outside and connect with Nature.

We have had our pack delivered which will help us plan all of our activities for the month.

Sign up is completely free and you will get emails throughout June with inspiration of how you can connect with nature, and there are lots of download able resources on the website too.

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/30dayswild

To give you some early inspiration, these special national dates all fall in June!

🪸1st World Reef Day

🌍 5th World Environment Day

🦋 6th Butterfly Education and Awareness Day

🌊 8th World Ocean Day

💚 6th -14th Great Big Green Week

🐢 16th World Sea Turtle Day

🦒 21st World Giraffe Day

🌧️ 22nd World Rainforest Day

🐝 22 - 28th National Insect Week

This week we will be enjoying our Lincolnshire Wildlife trust and RSPB magazines while planning all of our wild activities for next month!

🌍 E A R T H D A Y 🌍Sometimes it feels impossible to imagine that we can make a difference to the world. The problem...
24/04/2026

🌍 E A R T H D A Y 🌍

Sometimes it feels impossible to imagine that we can make a difference to the world. The problems feel so vast and it can feel like the little changes we make are too little too late.

But nature has a way, and the tiny steps we take now could be just enough to make huge impact in the future.

As a family and as a business we try to be mindful of the footprint we leave behind and do what we can to learn about our local wildlife and what we can do to help.
But we have a unique oppertunity to make an even bigger difference.

We have the next generation.

We have the chance to show every child who walks through our doors the magic of the great outdoors.
By simply spending time outdoors, the children notice the changes to the landscape throughout the year, and they notice the wildlife, from the huge deer quietly sneaking through the woodlands to the miniscule ants carrying dirt out of their tunnels.

We need to get our children outdoors.

In these precious early years, the world is full of wonder. The feel of grass under their feet, the sound of birds in the morning, the curiosity sparked by alien looking fungi growing from a fallen tree. These early experiences with nature are the foundation for a lifelong relationship with the environment.

The more the children see, the more questions they ask, and the more they learn.
They begin to understand that we are a part of nature, and the nature isn't just something you see out the window.

The first step to protect our planet in the future is to fall in love with it now. 🧡

🚯 L I T T E R 🚯Yesterday, on our first trip to the park after our Easter break, the children (and us adults) were appa...
16/04/2026

🚯 L I T T E R 🚯

Yesterday, on our first trip to the park after our Easter break, the children (and us adults) were appalled by the amount of rubbish we saw all through the bushes and trees.
The children talked about how dangerous it is for other children, dogs and all of the animals.

So todays mission was to take Fox Dens very own litter picking kit out for its first outing of the year and clean up the park.

1 hour and 2 bin bags full of rubbish later and the area is looking much cleaner and safer for everyone to enjoy.

Although we only made a very small dent in the local littering problem, the activity supported the childrens development across a huge range of areas including, but not limited to,

🚮Developing gross motor skills, core strength and arm strength
🚮Develiping fine motor skills and hand strength
🚮Developing hand eye coordination
🚮Looking for and finding pieces of litter independently (you'll be surprised how difficult this can be for young children!)
🚮Working together towards a shared goal
🚮Communication between peers of different ages 2-5 (which is a whole different skill to communicating with an adult!)
🚮Turn taking
🚮Drawing upon previously learned kowledge of animals and insects that we saw
🚮Drawing upon previously learned kowledge of different types of plants so we could work out which ones are safe to touch
🚮Learning about hazardous materials and how to safely handle them and the consequences of handling them incorrectly
🚮Drawing upon previously learned kowledge of why litter is bad for our environment
🚮Showing great environmental and community responsibility and an empathy for wildlife
🚮Differentiating between different types of materials

For us adults, it was absolutely captivating to watch 3 wonderful little people achieve such big things 🧡

🌸 O U T D O O R S 🌸The children have left their mark on the great outdoors this week. Our week started with a trip to ...
27/03/2026

🌸 O U T D O O R S 🌸

The children have left their mark on the great outdoors this week.

Our week started with a trip to the woods to scatter some bird food that one of our children very kindly brought in to share with everyone. We noticed a lot more birds around than usual which has led us to investigate the birds around our local area.

Armed with our trusty bird spotting book and a fantastic app (Merlin Bird ID) we headed our to our local park and leisure center to see what birds we could fine.
Once we saw a bird, we talked about its distinguishing features and looked through our book to find out the name and more information on the bird.

When we could hear birds singing, we used our app to detect which birds we could hear, then isolated the different bird sounds and listened carefully so we could mimic the bird calls.
Screens are rarely used in our normal day-to-day but using an app like this can be incredibly beneficial to learning.

Towards the end of the week we looked at some different options for making bird feeders.
We chose 3 different types that we can make using some recycled materials, and made a start ready to finish them next week.
Drawing on previous knowledge from books, our trips outdoors and the childrens home life, we asked the children to choose which foods they thought would be most suitable for birds.
They chose bird seed mix, dried mealworms and were undecided about orange, so we are running a little experiment to see if any of our orange slices are eaten over the weekend.

In between all of the birds talk, we managed to squeeze in some time to plant out the first few bits in the garden. 🪴

🌸 S P R I N G 🌸If you were out and about last week you might have heard a strange sound. If you did, it was probably E...
22/03/2026

🌸 S P R I N G 🌸

If you were out and about last week you might have heard a strange sound.
If you did, it was probably Early Years practitioners everywhere rejoicing as the snow suits and mittens were tossed to the side in favour of jackets and children's dexterity!

Okay okay, it was just a couple of days, we aren't getting too excited yet, but it sure gave us a kick-start to get our outdoor area spring ready.

The children thoroughly enjoyed getting their outdoor hours in as they explored the garden, had storytime and colouring out at the park and helped us with some very important jobs around the garden.

Winter left its mark on the garden and all of our outdoor equipment, so for the first waterplay of the, they used warm soapy water and some sponges to sponge down some of the toys and equipment.
After that we emptied one of our borders of stones (which was a dream come true for some of our older children who particularly enjoy transporting anything and everything) and filled it with compost ready to sow some much needed flower seeds!
Lastly the children chose some lovely new bird feeders and filled them with delicious treats in anticipation of seeing some more birds visiting our outdoor space.

As soon as we closed our doors ready for the weekend, the real work began.
We have built, painted, filled, lifted, jet washed, swept and organised all weekend to get our garden ready for the children to enjoy the spring.
Since moving, we have definitely missed our allotment garden, so we have introduced a small planter vegetable patch which we hope to expand on in the coming years.

We can't wait to show the children the first seeds, flowers and herbs that they will be adding to their new vegetable patch, and introduce them to their dedicated waterplay area!

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Scunthorpe
Scunthorpe
DN171BQ

Opening Hours

Monday 7:30am - 4:30pm
Tuesday 7:30am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 7:30am - 4:30pm
Thursday 7:30am - 4:30pm
Friday 7:30am - 4:30pm

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