Everbys Childminding

DIY wipe clean baubles, perfect for mark making.

And at this time of year there's plenty of cardboard lying around.

Thank you for sharing PACEY ❤

Hope everyone has enjoyed the Jubilee xx

Jubilee activities

We've been seeing lots of the Union Jack so thought we'd have a go ourselves outside.

The screen was marked out with masking tape and the boys found all the triangles that needed to be blue and then the cross, red. However it wasn't long before they remembered that red and blue made purple. When all was covered we waited for it to dry while we cleaned ourselves up. Then we had to pick at the tape and pull it off.
Was it better before or after? We all liked both versions. Later I pinched an idea from and got them to clean it up using sponges, brushes and squeegee (I've just Googled it to see if it's a real word)

This might be useful...

Do you work in a school, nursery or childminders? We've produced two posters giving advice on avoiding choking hazards which can be displayed where food is prepared and served to young children.

Download them now from Foundation Years: https://foundationyears.org.uk/2021/09/food-safety-advice-on-choking-hazards-in-settings/

We went to feed the ducks this morning, it was a little bit cold to start with, but the sun soon came out and we enjoyed a play in the park.

Hop little bunny hop hop hop... who's hiding from the fox.
We made rabbit ears
We danced to hop little bunny and changed the lyrics to eat, dig.
We played a new game pretending to be rabbits.

Easter egg decorations begin

While looking for signs of Spring we gathered some natural resources to use with our play dough to make patterns in our egg shaped decorations.

Happy Mother's day

We've been so busy creating and crafting some gifts for the special mums in our lives. Here's a few

A big thanks to our playgroup Owlets were we decorated a lovely vase with flowers.

Painting a bouquet of flowers.

Just a little bit of Mothers day fun in the sun (the bits we can show you) ahead of Sunday.

Mother's Day baking

The mums have seen this surprise. The kids have made some beautiful cakes for mummy hoping they'll share 😉

Spring is here...

Spring has sprung! 🌸

As the flowers start to blossom, let this be your reminder that all children develop at their own pace 🙌

So try not to waste too much energy comparing your child's development to someone elses 🌻🌷🌼🌺⁣

Love this...

Being able to recognise and express emotions is a key part of a child's development 😊 Here are 9 ways to get the conversation started 🙌

Have you read The Colour Monster?
It's a lovely book about emotions.

We discovered how the monster was all confused and with some help gave some of his emotions a colour to help describe how he was feeling.

Here's our colour monster and our emotional check-in, which helps us talk about how we're feeling.

We also had great fun mark making our own jars with our own choice of colours.

5 currant buns

One of our favourite songs and after a discussion with one of my mindees, he suggested we made some. Good idea!

So we did, it was an activity we had to return to throughout the day, first weighing and mixing the ingredients, then kneading and dividing into 5, shaping, waiting for them to rise, cooking, cooling, icing and more waiting and finally eating.

8 wellbeing activities to help boost your toddler’s mental health

Some lovely ideas to do with your toddlers, by BBC Tiny Happy People for Children's Mental Health Week.

8 wellbeing activities to help boost your toddler’s mental health 8 simple and free wellbeing activities from Mrs Brain Trainer to help kids and toddlers work through feelings of stress, anxiety and anger. It's never too early to start learning about good mental health and mindfulness.

Messy Play, such as finger painting is important to every child’s development. Sensory experiences helps the body and brain process information and feelings. It can be calming and so much fun. It helps develop fine motor skills. Follow this by hand washing together in bubbly, soapy water and dry with a soft towel. It’s a great way to bond and provide care giving experiences to children who might rejected it usually. If your child really hates messy hands, they could wear gloves or you could do potato prints instead.
https://lecoindemel.com/thumbprint-drawing/

Christmas tree
More foraging in the garden for parts to make our tree. Bay, Ivy, Rosemary, Pine, Cotton Lavender all different greens and beautiful scents.

Topped with beads and bows and a bright star. They even added the basket holding the decorations at the bottom.

So much discussion, smelling, feeling the difference and similarities.

Take a seat at our new table and chairs and make a reindeer.

Armed with play dough, buttons and pompoms we searched the garden for different branches that would make good antlers for our reindeer faces. Before sitting down at our new wooden table and chairs kindly donated and made from a chopped down tree.

Chopping, pouring, stirring, emptying into tin. Quick taste test mmmmm

Christmas cake

Yesterday the little ones saved a few decorations too place under the tree as presents. So today I thought we could do a simple wrapping activity and have some bigger presents under the tree.

At first we tried wrapping simple shapes in tin foil. Then they went in search for other toys they could wrap.

Hungry reindeer

I'm afraid I've pinched this idea from somewhere else, but I really can't remember where. I couldn't resist making the little pot reindeer, we're feeding them oats and mixed spice. It smells like Christmas and the little ones are practising scooping, pouring into smaller objects. They're being so gentle encouraging the reindeer to eat.

#eyfchristmas #reindeerplay #sensorybin #smellslikeChritmas

Hungry reindeer I'm afraid I've pinched this idea from somewhere else, but I really can't remember where. I couldn't resist making the little pot reindeer, we're feeding them oats and mixed spice. It smells like Christmas and the little ones are practising scooping, pouring into smaller objects. They're being so gentle encouraging the reindeer to eat. #eyfchristmas #reindeerplay #sensorybin #smellslikeChritmas

Tree decorating, with felt, but the children discovered the pompoms worked just aswell. "Father Christmas will like it"

How deep is the puddle?

❤ Happy Mother's Day ❤

To all those amazing ladies have a fabulous day

Budding Bakers
Just making some healthy snacks for an afternoon treat. Chocolate banana muffins, but licking the spoon is the best bit, yes?

Who's got a 'Button box'?
I always remember visiting my Nan and enjoy going through her button box, but as I got older I could never understand why. Now seeing little ones do the same, as I did then I can.

It's like treasure, feeling them through your fingers, hearing the noise that they make, seeing all the shapes, sizes, textures and colours. We had such a wide variety of mathematical vocabulary, small big, wide, thin, shape, counting, and many more. An engaging activity.

And then we added glue, but that photo is for another day...

Ten little wooden dinosaurs
Finally got round to painting some more wooden peg dolls to match the dinosaurs in Ten Little Dinosaurs, somebody's favourite book.

We were reading The Tiger who came to tea, when a tiger came and made tea with us.

A lovely sensory activity using herbal tea bags, warm water, and a tea set. We talked about the about what was in the tea bags when they were dry, what they smelled like, the colours they made the water and what was in the wet tea bags. Lots of time pouring, mixing and squeezing, followed by a puddle jump at the end.

Happy World Book Day

Come to Everbys in your pyjamas and bring your favourite book (and cuddly toy) and snuggle up for a read. Here we are sharing Zog

Who's been making the most of the sunshine?
We've never made use of the cul-de-sac before but, as it's quiet and we're in lockdown it's a great place to burn off some energy on two wheels. Even better now the suns shining.

Car painting, tyre mark making.
Driving the vehicles through the paint to see what marks they make. After a while they started to run the hands over the paint to smooth it out before racing the vehicles back over it to make more tracks.

Construction time
We had fun today playing with the diggers and dumper trucks with the kinetic, blocks, boulders and stones.

Cars and shapes
There's a love of all 'things that move' here at the moment so today we did an activity using the vehicles with shapes.
We used masking tape on the floor to map out a triangle, square and a rectangle to drive round. Then we drew a few parking spaces each one with a different shape stuck to it, we also added matching shapes to each vehicle so we could pair them up.

What does one slide, one ball pool, one tunnel, balloons and lots of cushions equal. SOFT PLAY in lockdown.

Especially for a little bees 2nd birthday for tomorrow

What's on your pancakes?
We've been mixing, making, squeezing and flipping some scrumptious pancakes. We've tried lemon and sugar and bananas and maple syrup.

Followed by a story of Mr Wolf's pancakes.

Chocolate and strawberry scented playdough, time to make some chocolates. They had fun trying to squeeze different shapes out of the different tools to make some beautiful chocolates.

Finger painting and making heart hats.

We used paper plates and cut a heart shape out the middle. Using various shades of red and pink they used their fingers and hands to decorate them.

Some great vocabulary from the little ones, crumbs and wiggle perfectly describing this