Roxanne's Little Explorers Childminding

🫶🌱🌍 Painted Earth Lanterns 🌍 🌱🫶

What a way to celebrate Earth day, sitting amongst the bluebells and wood anemones with the smell of flowering wild garlic wafting among us, the sun shining and making the water sparkle ✨

We had already talked about the Earth as a planet in space back at home in the polytunnel… Now we talked about all the beauty that our natural world has to offer… The land, the sea, the animals, we went through loooooong lists of animals and sea creatures that we love ❤️

Then we talked about and read about ways that we can keep our planet, seas and air clean… Recycling ♻️, litter picking and making sure we always put our rubbish in the bin.

We painted our earths green for the land and blue for the sea, such fab fine motor skill practice and amazing to see how the older ones tripod grips are developing..

We then hung them in the trees to dry 🌳 🌍 🌱❤️

It was a pretty long walk back to the van so we chose to take it reeeeally slowly and wallow in the wonder of the world, the tiny stones, the way the sticks snap when you walk on them and gather feathers 🪶
Unhurried and beautiful 🙏

Happy Earth day for the 22nd!

🌼🌷🌱Spring Inspired Embroidery 🌱 🌷🌼

Fine motor skills at their absolute best 🙌

The children and I had been chatting about the beautiful colours in my flower pots outside and learning more vocabulary… Lilac, indigo, cerise, amber or even just that it’s lighter or darker and I thought this would be fun to extend and enrich their knowledge even further by letting them have free rein with their colour choices and design….

We have tried sewing before but with a more structured approach and a modelled end result but this was enjoyed far more by everyone, they reeeeally got into this and came back to it at least a couple of times a day throughout the week.

The hessian sacking was so easy to pull the large children’s needles through and the concentration needed to make sure they went back and forth without going around the outside of the embroidery ring was gorgeous to behold.
The embroidery ring itself was also the key to this activity I think as it made it less difficult than dealing with a moving piece of fabric, which made it easier for them to concentrate on their designs.

One child had a full description of how the white wool was the clouds, the silver string the dewdrops, purple my grape hyacinths… Really a beautiful demonstration of child led with a prepared environment…

I did help with the needle threading and changing the colour of the wool, but this was just an opportunity to chat along the way ❤️🙏

I’m hoping to make one if these for each season, each time inspired by what they can see in the garden and how wonderful it will be to see the colours change as do the seasons… 🙏

I thought about making it into bunting! But the children were so excited to take them home to show their parents as I had promised they could at the end of the week, so we will save that for next time ☺️

🌈 Tie Dye Hard Boiled Eggs 🌈

These are gorgeous aren’t they!
What a fun and engaging process too that will be great for all age groups ❤️🙌

All you need is:
Kitchen roll
Washable Pens
String
Spray bottle
Eggs ( white )

Hard boil your eggs first and let them cool.
Then colour your kitchen roll any way you like, I like to do rainbow or circles is always good.
It doesn’t have to be neat at all, but it’s good to get lots of pen in there as this will form your tie dye ☺️

Wrap your egg and tie with string.
Then use a spray bottle to soak it just enough so that it’s about to drip but not enough it does drip to much as all the dye will be washed out 🤪

Leave to dry and then unwrap your eggs to reveal the gorgeous creations!

Fab fine motor skill practice, colour mixing, using imagination and creativity, expanding vocabulary with all the shades of the various colours, we will count the eggs and share them between the children - early maths -
So much learning and the process is just fascinating every step of the way. 🥰

These would be lovely to send home in an egg box for Easter instead of chocolate or just to decorate the table.
Or, like we are, you can just have them at snack time for a tasty beautiful treat 🙏😊❤️

☘️ Recycled Nature Shamrock ☘️

EDIT: I’m aware I have accidentally given the clovers four leaves, making them lucky clovers, instead of 3 which would make them the ones that are for st Patrick’s day 🙈🤪🙈

It’s St. Patrick’s day on the 17th of March and I thought I’d introduce the idea to the little ones by making these nature shamrocks with them today on one of our adventures 💚

I had printed some really simple sheets with some facts surrounding st Patrick’s day which we had a look at before we went….
St Patrick’s day is a Christian festival which is celebrated all over the world in Ireland, America, Australia and Canada, as well as England and has slowly become quite a celebration over 250 years.
St Patrick was the patron saint of Ireland and it is said that he performed a thousand miracles before he became a saint…
The biggest celebration is in America and was introduced by the Irish immigrants, in New York the Empire State Building is lit up green and an entire lake is dyed green in Chicago, wow!
Green is the colour which everyone wears to celebrate as it reminds them of Ireland and it is also one of the colours of the Irish flag…

I learnt lots today too! Hehe! 😜

The children lives searching for the green leaves which were actually harder to find than you might think… We chatted about how some trees are deciduous and others evergreen. We compared sizes of the leaves and the thickness and lengths of the sticks too.

Totally free and sparked so much curiosity, conversation and joy 🤩 ☘️ 🌈 🙌☀️

🌺 Mother’s Day Homemade Whipped Sugar Scrub 🌺

I will be making these gorgeous smelling treats with my little ones for Mother’s Day this year… 🌱🙏
I LOVE how they have turned out!
I just had to do a tester to make sure that they are easy enough and not too time consuming…
Although they look so beautiful they are really SO simple, were super quick to make and use only two ingredients 🥰

You can ask parents to send jars from home too, or just collect some over the next few days 🙏

RECIPE:
Coconut oil and white sugar on a 1:1 ratio…
That.Is.It!

You pop it in a hand blender, whip until fluffy and it’s done.. You can add essential oils if you have them, or any dried botanicals, I used rose buds but lavender would be lovely too 🌱 A drop of food colouring can be fun as well 🥰

We will be measuring, scooping, pouring and transferring the ingredients. Talking about when our jars are empty, half full and full.
We will be smelling the essential oils, feeling how the coconut oil is smooth and the sugar is rough against our skin.
We can mark make on the labels and take turns using the hand mixer, such a lot of beautiful learning happening, plus a wonderful gift to take home ❤️🙏🌱 🌺 🥰

🍊🌲 Winter Spiced Festive Simmer Pots 🌲🍊

Some gorgeous Christmassy ingredients to send home to pop into water and simmer for a gorgeous festive smelling house this holiday…. 🙏

We took our oranges, apples, cranberries and slices with us today and sat in the forest to create these. It was divine…. The winter sun shone, the children sliced the fruits and snipped the pine from the trees…
Self selected the spices, smelling them as we went…
We counted the cranberries, talked about the circle shapes of the oranges and how the inside of the apple cores looked like stars 🌟 As did the star anise….

Actually pretty idillic 🌲🙏🍊

I searched and searched for a biodegradable transparent bag as I was hoping to find one, but unfortunately couldn’t in time… They must exist… maybe made of potato starch… Pls let me know if you know where you can get them… ☺️🙏☺️

🪽🍂👼🏼 Leaf Angel Wings 🪽 🍂👼🏼


Feeling nostalgic for my own little ones seeing all these sweet nativity pictures…. All those cliches are true, time goes so fast!

Inspired by that I thought it would be a good time to finally get around to making these, I’ve been wanting to try them for aaaages….
They turned out beautifully 🙏🤩

✨❄️ Stick Snowflakes ❄️ ✨

How pretty will these look all@hung in a row glittering away or on the children’s Christmas trees at home 🥰

All we needed was some string, paint, glue and glitter ( biodegradable) and a bit of imagination ❤️

We searched for our sticks, realising and counting that we only needed 3 to make a lovely snowflake…. Measured them against each other to make sure they were similar width and length.

Painted, practicing those fine motor skills and strengthening those little fingers muscles Then covered in glue and then sprinkled the gorgeous glitter over the top…

The children were really engaged throughout and it was a great way to give them a focus on a pretty cold walk this morning ❄️😊🙏

How inviting does the polytunnel look in the snow this morning!? ❄️🙏❤️

Outdoor Guy Fawkes Night fireworks! 🎇 🌳

Squirty squeezy bottles with diluted paint, brown paper between some trees and biodegradable glitter created our invitation to play in the woods today…

They chose their own colours, correcting identifying each paint as it came out of the bag 😊
It took them a little while to understand how the bottles worked and how to get the best paint splatter, but by trying again and again they found the best way….
It’s fascinating to watch their little brains working things out..
And when they did, what fun they had!!
Paint everywhere and happy smiley giggling faces 🤩🙏

Once they had sprayed their colours we gave them glitter in the palms of their hands and showed them how to blow it onto the paper for a really sparkly firework effect…
“ like how you would blow kisses 😘 “

The overall effect was lovely, but this was really a process over product activity…
Getting them really invested in concentrating to use their fine motor skills.

Being outside on such a gorgeous autumn day as well, a great morning for everyone x

🦊🍁Recycled Cardboard & Leaf Fox Masks🍁🦊

We have been marvelling at the beautiful sycamore leaves 🍁, and collecting the seeds recently….
We have also been reading lots of gorgeous autumn books that feature woodland animals and how they make their homes in and around trees… Plus I have been telling and retelling the story of how a fox was on my veranda last week trying to steal the dog bed! Hehe! Mischievous creatures!

I pre cut the masks using a template from the internet and a box cutter - then made some noses from egg boxes and let my older children hot glue them on ( my own are 10 and 12 🥰🦊🙏 )

Then we went on a leaf hunt! Counted them, sorted them by colour and size, threw them in the air and took out autumn story with us on our walk to link to the life cycle of our trees….

Then we took them home and used pva to stick them on…. We decided on paintbrushes to paint the leaves and admired how we could then see the veins on them that carry the nutrients…. I showed the children pictures of our lungs and they were amazed by the similarities 🥰🍁🙏

They are a little on the big side unfortunately so a bit tricky to wear, that’s something I would change for next time…. But such a fun process and an inspiration for our walks and chats last week ❤️🍁🧡🦊🥰🍂

🍁 🍂 Autumn Leaf Hair Dressing 🍂 🍁

Putting a spin on collecting autumn leaves today…
The idea was to collect leaves, draw little faces on them - chat about the different emotions drawn… Then use scissors to give them a haircut! ✂️ 🍁🥰

We had lots of littler ones today so their interpretation of this was a little different than if our older 4-5 year olds had created them… But wow their engagement 🙌

They thoroughly enjoyed practicing their fine motor skills and tripod grip using the chalk pens… We haven’t explored scissors very much yet and they were enthralled… The concentration!

Even collecting the leaves to begin with, choosing the colours and comparing sizes…

A fab activity for focus on an autumn walk and you just need some chalk pens and scissors 🍁❤️🍂

🍄🍁Recycled egg box mushrooms 🍁🍄

We took some egg boxes, paint, brushes and string with us to the forest today ☺️❤️
We searched for twigs for the stalks and talked about the difference in thickness and length. We counted how many children we were and how many egg box mushroom pieces we would then need and gave them out to each child…
The children helped cut the string, although adult help was required to wrap their twig and thread it though the end of the egg box.
The engagement during the painting was really great to behold… Those little finger muscles working in the autumn sunshine…

This was a great little activity to take for an autumn walk focus and they will look so lovely strung up as decor later in the polytunnel 🥰🍁🍄