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!

We have a vacancy to fill - do you know anybody who would like to join us on our adventures?? Puddle jumping, badge collecting, friend making fun ❤️

Summer holiday fun - lots of water play, completing our volcano badge, animals and trips to the leather museum 🌋

Our latest badge has been for World Oceans Day (but it continued long after!). We had a scavenger hunt at the Holly Bush looking for sea creatures, tried pond dipping, discovered the layers of the ocean (and the older children discussed liquid density and the depth of the ocean), had lots of water play, investigated treasure brought back from the ocean and read Tiddler and Shark in the Park. The children also used scissors and paints to make cardboard fish which we then attached to rods and took for a walk 😂

Last month, our first blanket was given to a leaver. We’ve been doing Pawprint badges (in true Hey Duggee style!!) and have managed one a month plus some bonus badges in the school holidays. A range of activities have been planned around a chosen topic and the kids have loved it, especially when they get their badge ❤️ Then, when each child leaves, they receive a keepsake blanket with all the badges they’ve collected attached. I was very pleased with the first completed blanket 👍

I haven’t used this page for a long time - work has been busy busy and communication has been done directly with the parents. Now, all the children that have been with me through Covid are moving on and I have vacancies to fill. Time to refresh the page and do some spring cleaning!!!

Spacehoppas, baking cookies and yesterday’s painted bunnies 😍

A day of science and potions 🧙‍♂️

Snow painting and toilet roll creations 😍

Autumnal walks and nature discoveries 🍂 Lots of leaves and pigeons, a camouflaged moth, some tiny eggs and a beautiful mushroom that got trodden on before a picture was taken ☹️

We've done lots of baking over the last couple of weeks - bread in a bag, courgette fritters, courgette muffins and Irish soda bread 👍 Whilst you might guess that we have a lot of courgette from our allotment, the Irish soda bread was inspired by my sister's manic travels over the next few weeks...what will be next?!

Look what we've got!!!! Thank you to my other half 😍

Some fun in the bath today - a reminder that craft foam sticks to tiles with water...we made these duck numbers several years back for a Storybox idea with the book 10 Chuckling Ducklings and today, at long last, they were played with 😂 A folder of off cut random shapes is great for creating imaginative pictures and patterns (orderly numbered ducks is not usually my thing!!!!) 👍

We litter picked and played with stones today - I planned a wild flower colour collect which the kids started but their ideas took over just the way I like it 👍 The after schoolers made a volcano too as planned by our science loving child last week 😊

Following a little one's look of joy at a field of sheep last week, we set off to a working farm today - saw lambs, ponies, friendly goats, pigs and noisy noisy chickens! We also saw a very excited farmer take receipt of his new baler/wrapper 😁 Hoverflies and ants were the highlights of our walk to and from school 😊

Celebrating Eid today 😊 Whilst the little ones were a tad more interested in balloons, Twister and Pass the Parcel, I learnt loads and will pass on my knowledge via Oreo moon charts 😄

Very pleased with this 😁

Outdoor activities from the last week - allotment strawberry picking, splash pad, Stone Age day, rabbit care, animal sanctuary, Jack's Wood and bugs galore 👍

We are truly embracing our 30 Days Wild in June - after making a butterfly feeder to go next to our bird station yesterday with the littlies, me and my daughter have been on an awesome minibeast adventure today, learning about bees, butterflies and moths, painting with maggots, pond dipping and meadow sweeping...and eating bugs 😱 This is my kind of professional development - educating myself so I can share the excitement and discovering activity ideas 👍

A day filled with science today 😊 Submarines, microscopes, water play, park and snail experiments...will they find their way home? 🐌

This is our favourite story at the moment and I love how it demonstrates the power of the media (taking me right back to my degree dissertation!) - we can't quite refer to him as a mean and hungry troll anymore because trolls are happy creatures who love to dance and sing and hug 😄 So now he's a Bergen 👍 Quite a current topic I felt, after last week's election and the portrayal of certain figures in the news 😱 If you'd like to read any more about this subject, I have an in depth essay on
Shrek you can borrow lol 😂

It has figured quite a lot in our week though 📚 Everyone loves to join in with the repetitive phrases and one child has even 'read' it to another today 😍 We've also built bridges and re-enacted the story with small world figures 😊

We've had a real day of allsorts today...from the planned to the impromptu 👍 First thing this morning, we sat in the car and watched a lorry removing the polling stations before heading home for stories and bird feeding 🐦After lunch at the tea rooms, we headed to the allotment to do all things wild - a bit of colour bashing (making headbands from natural colours), eating home grown strawberries, a tree shake leading to an inspection of a click beetle, and just a general dig 🌱Following the school run, we did science experiments...floating a paper clip and some air travel with a balloon 🎈Fab day 😊

We're taking part in the 30 Days Wild in June at the moment - connecting with nature on a daily basis. Today we returned to our fleece, following one of the children's interest in a piece of sheep's wool they found last week. We experienced the smell of the countryside as well as touching the wool, feeling the oil and carding the fibres 👍

We also took a trip to the dinosaur exhibition at Bilston Craft Gallery and scared ourselves silly having a close encounter with the biggest beasts 😱 After returning our books to the library too, we engineered with different blocks and bridges and explored a caterpillar through a magnifying glass 🔍

Snail racing today 🐌 🐌 🏁

Did you know that snails have four tentacles - the two top ones are for seeing and the bottom ones for smelling. We've put some broken shell in with our pet snail for him to consume to help him produce a good hard shell. And, apparently, they have a good homing instinct...we'll experiment with this at a later date 👍

You're never too old for a treasure basket - ours is full of intriguing things of different textures and properties. Today a 5 year old collected all the shiny things, polishing them, lining them up and exploring reflections of the finished arrangements. She combined other items in her exploratory play solving problems along the way and without interaction...lovely heuristic play 😊

Added string to an old time favourite 'hammering golf tee' activity, and explored new ideas with a selection of nuts and bolts...from making fairy sized weights to stacking washers 👍