Little Sparkles Childminding

April and May fun for the Sparkles. We've had new toys with the magantiles. We've played outside in the water and made marks with chalk and water. We went for a walk in Greylees and saw the diggers. We went for a walk by the river and saw the baby swans and moorhens. We played ball and made a tractor pictures.

All about wheels this week. Today doing some tractor craft. We painted a ploughed field and then used the shapes to add a tractor and some crops.

Easter holidays...just 1 little one in over the holidays so we've had a few days out and about. We went down to the local farm and saw the sheep, lambs and horses.

Meagan joined us at the garden centre and for a walk around Culverthorpe. We fed the fish and bought some fish food for our fish.

Then this week T returned and we've been busy thinking about things with wheels. We used the cars to mix blue and red paint to make purple. Then they were messy so we used brushes to clean them.

After this we went on a walk and made a tally chart of all the things we saw that had wheels - cars, lorries, vans, bikes, pushchairs and even wheelie bins. Oh and T spotted a lawnmower too.

Tomorrow its all about tractors.

Healthy eating and home cooked meals is something that happens a lot at Little Sparkles and the Sparkles love helping.

Today we had cheesy carrot waffles for lunch. They helped with carefully grating the carrot. Beating the egg and mixing in the flour and grated cheese (plant based for our dairy free Sparkle).

After it was cooked in the waffle maker we had it with cucumber, tomato, pepper, a few lentil crisps and some banana, nectarine and pear.

Empty plates all round.

Following children's interests is such an important part of learning. Following on from our walk the other day where we spotted lots of ladybirds we read the story of The Bad Tempered Ladybird and then used our thumbs and fingers to paint ladybirds onto a leaf shape. Finally adding spots and legs with a black pen.

Sunny days at the park are the best days. Even better when you share them with friends and even better than that when you make new friends too.

Today we went to the park and met up with a fellow childminder and her little people. We made new friends and made plans to meet up again soon.

We needed to remember to take turns and help our friends too - especially when they fall over. We learnt that helping them up and checking that they are okay is a lovely kind thing to do.

We played ball with another new friend and learnt the importance of taking turns and giving things back when we have finished with them.

Friends and sunny days - you can't beat them.

Using those observational skills again to spot some ladybirds in the Spring sunshine. The older ones counted them but we lost count when we got to 60 something. Easily saw over 100.

Now here comes the process art. This helps develop imagination, creativity and in this case observational skills.

We popped into the garden and picked a couple of daffodils. We've looked at different spring flowers on our walks so were able to identify the daffodils.

Then using yellow and green paint the Soarkles painted some beautiful pictures of the daffodils they picked.

All year round we tend to do process art but sometimes its just nice to do a bit of product art especially if its for a special occasion such as Mothers Day. Its a keepsake that says "I was this big in 2026".

We went to Tescos and picked out a candle each and the ingredients to make biscuits.

Spring has sprung at Little Sparkles. We have pastel coloured chickpeas, flowers and bumblebees in our sensory tray this month. We have a daisy sorting tray. We are using fine motor skills to find the different colours and the bumblebees.