Julie Thompson Childminding

I repotted the sunflowers and have watered them through the hot weather, now they are ready for the children to take them home, and care for them, watch them grow and bloom into beautiful sunflowers 🌻

The children were highly engaged with a great sensory messy play activity with jelly this morning at playgroup. It supports lots of areas of learning and development in the EYFS.
The children explored the texture, temperature, smell, colour, and movement through touch and manipulation.

Cant believe our sunflowers have already started to grow, after planting them on Thursday 😊🌻

We made the most of the sunshine and spent a lot of the morning in the garden yesterday, whilst outside as well as enjoying the climbing frame, sand play, rolling the balls down the pipe, and the hoops we planted our sunflower seeds which all the children joined in with. Its a great activity for learning about the world around them, and building confidence, we talked about Spring, growth and parts of the flowers as they will grow. The children took turns sharing the spade and the watering can, and I explained I will water them regularly until they sprout and start to grow, then they can take them home to plant in the own gardens, and see how tall they grow 🌻❤️

One of my little ones enjoyed helping to make some savoury muffins for their lunch the next day. Baking with under 3s is a simple activity that actually supports all the developmental areas, as we as promoting Healthy eating awareness
Using savoury ingredients (like vegetables, cheese, herbs) helps introduce different tastes and supports early conversations about food and healthy choices. It’s less about the muffins themselves and more about what children experience while making them. Great work they were very tasty😋

The children took part in a creative painting activity to make butterfly pictures for Mother’s Day. The activity was adapted to suit different age groups. The younger children explored paint safely by placing paper and paint inside a sealed food bag, allowing them to press, squeeze and move the paint around to create colourful butterfly patterns. The older children were given the opportunity to paint freely, using brushes and their own ideas to design their butterflies. The children showed great enthusiasm and enjoyment while expressing their creativity.

Early Years Learning Outcomes:
• Expressive Arts and Design: Children explored colours and different ways of making marks to create butterfly artwork.
• Physical Development: The activity supported fine motor skills through squeezing the bag, holding brushes and making controlled marks.
• Communication and Language: Children talked about what they were making and shared ideas about their butterflies and Mother’s Day.
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Children developed confidence in expressing their creativity and took pride in making a special picture for someone important to them.
• Understanding the World: Children began to recognise and talk about celebrations such as Mother’s Day and why they are important.

What a build up to the end of our Christmas term. The children have enjoyed creating and making some lovely crafts, cards and decorating some tasty gingerbread. All put together in their lovely hand decorated personalised Christmas bags, which I unfortunately forgot to take pictures of before I gave them out yesterday. They also had a great time at a couple of Christmas parties, and a festive Jo Jingles session.

This half term week as Halloween approached we have been doing activities and crafts based on this topic, nothing scary as based on the age group I currently care for. We visited the secret farm, and played in the maze, and on the hay bails, and collected some different colour & size pumpkins.
In a sticking activity we made some friendly ghost decorations 👻 and we decorated some witch 🧙‍♀️pictures using paint.
We baked some tasty cookies and decorated them with chocolate to look like spiders 🕷️🕸️
Today we cut open our pumpkins and looked at the insides, scooping the flesh and the seeds🎃