Tuesday 16 December 2014

Christmas Toddler Group


We attend a lovely toddler group on Tuesday mornings and throughout December we have had the opportunity to participate in some great Christmas opportunities for the children. 


At the beginning of December the children were able to make their own Christingle to take home. They thought this was great fun as sweets were involved. They all threaded their sweets perfectly and were very proud of their creations!


In the middle of December the children participated in a nativity. We were given the parts of a sheep and two of the wise men. The children enjoyed dressing up and being part of a play. They were brilliant!


Finally, this week it was time to party! The children enjoyed games, presents and party food to finish the term off.  

Thursday 11 December 2014

Peppermint puffy paint


To make puffy paint I combined PVA glue, Shaving foam, poster paint, peppermint oil and lots of green glitter! The peppermint oil gave the paint a lovely smell and the glue enabled us to stick lots of glitter and sequins to the paint. 



We decided to make Christmas trees with our puffy paint. The older children decided to do outlines for their trees and fill them in with paint while the youngest children free-styled! When they had made a tree shape they had great fun decorating their trees and adding some Christmas pictures and writing. 


We left the pictures to dry overnight and the combination of shaving foam and glue makes the pictures lovely and 'puffy'! The children loved the fact that this paint was thicker and that they were able to add decorations without waiting for the pictures to dry first. We had a lot of different styles of Christmas trees demonstrating the lovely interpretations of all the children. 

Thursday 4 December 2014

Christmas Crafts


There are so many fun Christmas craft ideas and so little time to get all the crafts done that, together with two other childminders, we decided to arrange a Christmas craft session. We each brought an activity for the children and the children chose the crafts they wanted to participate in. 


We had a lovely morning as the children enjoyed gluing, cutting, sticking as well as stuffing bottles to make snowmen. 


The children were so proud of their work which included stained glass windows, sparkly tinfoil Christmas tree decorations, cotton wool snowmen bottles and some fantastic Christmas Cards. 


We all had a lovely social morning which ended with some Christmas singing and lots of goodies to take home. 


Thursday 27 November 2014

Jumbo Pippettes


The latest addition to our resources was some jumbo eyedroppers, large colourful pipettes that I thought would be great for the children's developing coordination and fine motor skills.


To gain the children's interest I provided some bicarbonate of soda with some drops of food colouring in them along with a pot of vinegar and they could not wait to get started. They were fascinated by the immediate reaction of the powder and began commenting on both the fizzing noise and the colours. 


The use of the muffin tray proved fascinating for the children also as they began to move their coloured liquids from one compartment to the other. 


These pipettes were a huge success with all ages and we shall definitely be looking out for more ways to make use of them soon.

Thursday 20 November 2014

Road Safety Week

This week is national road safety week in England and we have used this as good reason to learn a bit more about road safety. While we are regularly crossing roads and road safety is an integral part of our daily routine but this week we have focussed on why we do things a little more. 



We have been out to our local park with the scooters and looked at the purpose of zebra crossings and how we hold hands near the road. 

We have used our cars at home to enhance awareness of safe places to cross the road as well as having a traffic light theme to some of our craft this week where the children talked about the colours of the lights and what they mean.