Tonkytots Childminding

It’s that time of year again where we have vacancies for new starters - the older children are off to pastures new 😢 If you’re looking for childcare then please get in touch - if you’re not looking for childcare then perhaps you’d share our post 🥰 Here are a few of our children off to explore the canal as we’re currently doing our water badge 💦

Here be dragons! 🐉 We tied St George’s Day in with Zog by Julia Donaldson, doing all things dragony….obviously celebrating and protecting them rather than slaying them!!! Everybody made a dragon puppet and interacted with them (proudly taking them into school to show their teachers ❤️), painted a shield, cut out gold stars and decorated crowns. But most fun of all was the dragon training - we all got our wings and practised jumping to see how high we could fly, roared into a decibel reader, battled each other with sword and shields, did some fire safety and stop-drop-and-roll to help Zog extinguish his wings, toasted marshmallows and blew out candles 😁 One of my favourite badges 🔥

In March and April, we did our insect badge (which slowly moved away from insects to other mini beasts following the children’s interests!). We went on bug hunts, made butterfly paintings, looked at length with string and playdough worms, made chocolate dirt, produced a wormery and a bug hotel, raced snails and brought them inside for a bit to observe them, and learnt some minibeast signing. It was all accompanied by many readings of Superworm, mini beast poems and songs!!!!

It was World Book Day last week - the children had a great time dressing up as characters from books and sharing stories and songs. We made bookmarks which involved cutting, sticking, hole punching, threading and colouring. We also visited the library and the supermarket to buy a World Book Day book - it’s a great mini adventure and there are wonderful sights to see whilst we’re out and about 📖 📚

We’re going on a Bug Hunt….

New badges have arrived today!!! We have completed our Lunar New Year rabbit badge - we visited the Holly Bush to look at the rabbits (and everything else!), made rabbits and Chinese lanterns using scissors and sellotape independently, listened to stories and about rabbit care with Tuzi the rabbit puppet, played Sleeping Bunnies under the parachute and tried Chinese food 🧧

Happy Valentine’s Day 🥰

We’ve broken up for Christmas!!! It hasn’t been our usual run up to Christmas with everybody busy at nursery but we’ve squeezed in as much as we can - my not-so-little Christmas helper visited the children at 1911 cafe to give out presents, we’ve played games, made decorations, decorated biscuits and had Christmas outings to Wightwick Manor & the Holly Bush plus a train journey to Telford!!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone 🎅🏻 🎄

This is my business and it needs some help from you! We have spaces available and need you to spread the word (especially if you have friends with little ones!!). We care for children and babies of any age and can claim two & three year old funding.

For anyone that doesn’t know about my work, I have been childminding for 12 years and now work with my partner, Andy Tonks, to provide a service in our local area including Willenhall and Essington. We have a home-based child-led learning environment but like to go out and explore the local area too. We currently do badges with the little ones which adds a fun element to our planning and covers all areas of the early years curriculum!

I have a degree in Early Years & Special Needs and Inclusion studies and previous experience in various settings including charities, schools, nurseries & youth work.

So like, share and follow what we do on our TonkyTots Childminding page and get our business back up to full capacity ❤️

Our recent adventures - getting close to dinosaurs and starting our Winter badge ❄️ We have another vacancy and welcome babies and children of all ages…come and join our fun 🥰

Some Julius Zebra drawings from the older children following a tutorial ❤️ Something a little bit different!