Making Christmas Gifts 2017

The children take great pride in taking things home that they have made themselves as well as enjoying giving gifts to their parents. For that reason we focussed on a variety of different things that the children could take home from art and craft projects through to baked goods. 

For cards and decorations the children used their increasing dexterity to stick tissue paper to objects, spread glue and pick up small gems to decorate their items with. They used their language and understanding of the world to ask for different coloured paper and gems. We had some interesting reactions to glue on fingers with some definitely less bothered than others.   

The children were so excited to be making gingerbread shapes and all washed their hands in preparation. They took it in turns to weigh, pour, mix and roll as well as selecting cutters to finally cut out their shapes. They waited eagerly while the gingerbread cooked and were keen to tell their parents about the presents that they had made them for Christmas. 

Shrove Tuesday

Today was Shrove Tuesday and we had a few activities planned that even the youngest children could participate in in order to enhance children's understanding of their community. Initially a fellow childminder set out a role play tray. We talked about the ingredients used to make pancakes and about using up the food before we give up some of our favourite items for lent. The children pretended to mix, break eggs and generally make pancakes for each other.

Then came the cooking and eating element of the day! The children watched how the pancakes were cooked and then all had a go at trying to flip a pancake. They chose some toppings and then attempted to squeeze some lemon juice to go on their pancakes.

Later in the week the activity was extended through incorporation of some pancake themed messy play. I incited the children to play with flour, some small jugs of water and a combination of utensils. For the benefit of the older children there were numbers and words that they could incorporate into their play. The children had a great time scooping the flour into the water, stirring, pouring and eventually being brave enough to get their hands into the dough!

On their return from school our older children were keen to come and play and introduced the concept of making the dough into pancakes that hey could attempt to flip.

Easter Nests 2016

We have done several Easter crafts over the last couple of weeks but the children particularly enjoyed making some Easter nests to take home to their families. 

We made a list of the ingredients that we needed from the shop and went out together to buy these. The children looked for the letter sounds that they recognised on both the shopping list and on the boxes within the shops. 

The children used the scales and pointed out the numbers that they could see as we weighed out the objects, telling me whether we needed to add more or less to get the required amount. While our older ones measured out the ingredients our youngest member of the setting enjoyed putting the cake cases within the tins. The children then took it in turns to crush, mix and scoop the mixture. 

The older children counted out the correct number of eggs for the top of each cake while our youngest had a great time exploring with a saucepan and wooden spoon. Our school children were particularly pleased when they arrived home to homemade cakes!

Shrove Tuesday 2016

All children love baking activities so shrove Tuesday was the perfect opportunity to get in the kitchen and create some food. 

The children initially looked at a simple recipe sheet for making pancakes, talking about the order that we put the ingredients in the bowl and how we combine them together. The children all took turns in helping. 

We then set to work with the children using the scales to weigh out the correct amount of flour, pouring in the milk and the eggs and then mixing the ingredients together to create a batter. They felt the texture of the eggs and talked about the cold wet batter. 

Then it was time to cook! The children took turns in watching the batter transform in the frying pan from a liquid to a solid and they all wanted a go at flipping the pancakes, some of which were more successful than others! What a yummy way to spend a morning and we covered so many areas of learning:

Social Development: Working together and taking turns with the cooking tasks.
Physical Development: Using spoons correctly to weigh out the flour and mix the batter together with attempting to catch the pancakes!
Communication & Language: Following instructions to make the batter and using new words to describe our ingredients.
Literacy: Looking at written print of a simple recipe
Numeracy: Reading the numbers on the scales and counting the scoops of flour.
Understanding the World: Taking part in traditions of the community