Gemma's Little Oakes Childminding

13/11/2025

I absolutely love my job and the children here become part of my extended family, I am there not just for the children but the rest of the family too.

This week I heard the devastating news from one of my parents Gemma Evans Finlay that her baby girl Denvah has been diagnosed with eye cancer. Denvah is Mavericks baby sister, I look after Maverick during the week and Denvah was due to start here in January. How things can just change and upheave families with no warning at all 😢 There are no words that can make this better but I will offer support where possible to help Gemma and her family during this nightmare.
A friend of Gemmas has set up a gofund me page to offer some financial help for the family as both Gemma and Paul are self employed and will be missing alot of work with hospital visits and travel. If anyone is able to support please do so no matter how big or small 💗

Hi my name is Holly. After reading the devastating and heartbreak… Holly Metcalfe needs your support for Help Gemma, Paul & boys at this devastating time.

04/06/2024

The children have had an amazing afternoon in Bothal Woods as we took part in a forest school session delivered by Goosehill Early Excellence where we explored mathmatical language in nature. We look forward to attending future sessions.

23/05/2024

🦓🦒🐘 Hi everyone. This is going to be another long post so please stick around until the end! 🦓🦒🐘

We have had a couple of consistently quiet months and at the rate we’re going it has been a serious struggle to try and ensure we have enough coming through the till in order to pay our staff and overheads. We always receive amazing feedback from our customers and have lots of you guys returning for another play session, however we NEED more customers through our doors otherwise we will have no other choice but to close our gorgeous space - which would be absolutely heartbreaking for all of us 😭 This could even be in the next few weeks if things don’t pick up soon, so this is actually our last ditch effort to remain open. We recognise that time are tough at the minute but every penny, share, recommendation and review can seriously help us! If we have a sold out session and everyone spends £5 (the price of two coffees) this all adds up in our favour! But as mentioned previously in order to continue trading and providing you and your little ones with a safe place purpose built for learning and fun, we simply need more people to visit us and spend a little of their hard earned money! I’m sure you have all noticed the amount of play cafes that have closed in last year and this was part of their issues also - we are devastatingly heading in a similar direction. We have all worked so hard to create this business and would all be gutted to see it close but once again, we may not have a choice.

Once again we are asking all of you to give us your suggestions! You asked for more rolling entry days and we have listened ensuring we have three days of rolling entry but we are still not seeing the customers despite this. So please give us some ideas of what you guys to see which would convince you to come and visit us, as this is what Little Lqne Adventures is all about - helping our community and supporting both parents and little ones, so we would hate for you all to lose this.

Just a few more things, we have had some feedback recently regarding not always having a member of staff in view for the whole session. Just a polite reminder that if we are quiet we will only have one member of staff in and of course they may have some jobs that they need to complete in the kitchen, but they will always be available should you need a member of staff - just give the bell on the counter a loud ring and they will be with you as soon as they can!

So thank you so much for your continued support and we sincerely hope that you guys can work your magic again and get our beautiful cafe busy again! Share this post, tag your friends, and book on to one of our play sessions or evening sessions (as we have lots of spaces on nearly every session for the rest of the month, and hopefully we will see you all really soon!

You can book any of our sessions using this link: https://bookwhen.com/littlelaneadventures

17/05/2024

Great end to the week as we attended a fab Hartbeeps session with a group of other childminders and their children. Lots of singing and dancing from the children today.

16/05/2024

Myself and the children had a fab morning exploring a different forest school session at Elmore Park today. We learnt all about the elements needed to make fire, how to stay safe around the fire and also how to put out a fire safely too. We then created some artwork using the charcoal from the fire wood from our fire.

16/05/2024

Yesterday we had a great afternoon at forest school, where the children caught some tadpoles and also went on a treasure hunt after making maps to help find their way 🏴‍☠️

09/05/2024

What a beautiful day for our visit to the beach for the SeaScapes beach tots session which was run by The Wildlife Trust. The children were tasked with finding various shells, drift wood and seaweed - which we then used for some artwork and to make lovely mobiles to take home.

01/05/2024

What a lovely morning we had as we visited Houghton Community Nursery and spent the morning exploring the studio. The children have explored clay, as they manipulated it with both there hands and using tools. They all took an interest in mixing paint using the powder paints and the pipettes to measure the water. Lots of lovely learning experiences and ideas that I can bring back into my home setting. We look forward to our next visit.

27/04/2024

You’re all heroes ❤️

25/04/2024

A lovely change today as we enjoyed Beach school at Roker Beach - the children learned about staying safe on the beach, how we need to keep our planet clean and then we explored the different colours that we could find on the beach too. We then headed indoors to extend our learning using books and a range of drawing materials - we were also gifted some lovely resources to use back in my childminding setting to continue our learning 😊

19/04/2024

The children are loving the tulips at our local park - growing at each side of all the seats around the cricket pitch, they look beautiful and have definitely caught the attention of the children this week as they look at and smell them carefully on our way around 🌷🌷