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Mud play is enjoyed daily over here at Sam Goldsworthy Childminding. It is either explored at our local forest school, at the woods or in our setting garden. We feel it helps to connect the children to nature where they are enjoying the calmness of being outdoors and also builds up their childhood memories as well as being great for their immune system being out in mud and dirt!

We have a mud kitchen that was purpose built between our trees in the garden.  We have added many items such as weighing scales, cake tins, bun cases, saucepans and spoons as well as a range of natural items including shells, stones with different vegetables painted on them, pine cones and sticks.

We have noticed that this type of outdoor play encourages lots of learning opportunities to the children. These include rich language opportunities learning new words such as sticks, pine cones, berries etc - the children are communicating, negotiating, problem solving and listening to each other. It also inco...

How do you resource opportunities for small world play? As an early years teacher I would ensure I had small world opportunities in every area of provision. For instance adding small world creatures and loose parts to my malleable area and observe how children make their own props for imaginative story telling. My maths area would also offer challenges around a small world problem in KS1 provision. ‘Like the pirates have found some coins and have to make a total of 20 for Captain Blackbeard by adding coins together.’

Here are some of my top ingredients for resources and organisation.

-Offer small world and block play together.
-Add collections of loose parts to encourage creativity and imaginative story telling. See right brained mom for ideas.
-Foliage- real and artificial
-Add a light element; projectors, light box, rope lights and fairy lights.
-Take small world outside and use natural settings
-Mirrors
-Mark making equipment available
-peg people
-Offer different backgrounds like woven p...

How has your week been? Did you find your new rhythm or at least start to think about the changes you are making in your daily life to get yourself into the new swing of things? I hope you enjoyed my take on daily rhythm which I shared with you last week. This week I want to talk to you about getting that rhythm into your children’s lives and particularly how I’m engaging my son into our activities.

Some people find it harder to get boys to engage in work than girls but forget the typical stereotypes surrounding boys as they are truly just myths and the best way to engage your boy is to play to his interests. Talk to them, find out what excites them and what they actually want to learn about.

I have worked with lots of boys over my childminding career. I think I have looked after more boys than girls in actual fact. Each child has been completely unique. Their interests have differed and also their own personality attributes. Typically boys are headstrong and independent. They are...

This week our guest blogger Jamie is sharing with us the delights of Child Interest Planning. Follow Jamie at https://www.instagram.com/jaybruce/

Following a child’s interest…perhaps the most recognisable term coined in the Early Years. Setting up continuous provision based on interest was one of the first things I learnt when I started working with three, four, and five year olds here in the UK. The children inform the environment, shape their own next-steps, and, in turn, bolster the learning of the children around them by sharing their growing breadth of ideas. To me, there are two categories of ‘following interest”, which are actually quite different in practise. One might be more familiar to you, and the other you might see as more intuitive; a day-to-day occurrence that you have never put a name to.

1. Individual Interest Informs Set-up

Daily set-up which takes into account the interests of an individual, is a brilliant way of showing a child that you value what they...

My outstanding member Sam Goldsworthy Childminding not only features in our Wanderlust Nature Study Programme but is also one of our regular blog writers. 

We hope you enjoy her blog post this week!

This week we are writing about our favourite nature based learning ideas - as many of you are probably aware we absolutely love taking the children out and about to experience nature daily. We feel this has so many benefits such as building confidence, managing and taking their own risks, improves concentration and cognitive skills. It also provides many learning opportunities such as problem solving, outdoor maths, arts, literacy and many more.

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 We often visit the local woods. We go to the same woodlands each time as the children are comfortable with their surroundings and they have built a rapport with these woods. We talk about the different flowers and leaves that we can see growing or fallen from the trees. This changes with the seasons so there is always something new to spot...

Today we're joined by guest blog writer Nicola Hacking (follow at the curious case of the girl and the dog) sharing her love for nature and the impact on our wellbeing. 

The importance, role and vision of outdoor access in the early years has increased in leaps and bounds over previous years. We’re seeing a move away from traditional learning, with nurseries developing fabulous free-flow access, inspiring outdoor equipment and even ones based entirely outdoors in natural spaces. Children draw in the dirt with sticks, sing from the branches of trees and snooze lazily in hammocks, snuggled up in layers of cozy clothing. Practitioners hand out hot chocolates and giggle as they sneak an extra marshmallow for themselves and try not to develop too bad a t-shirt tan.

But why the shift? Or is it something in our very souls that’s been trying to burst out?

Scientific research tells us that time spent outdoors reaps a multitude of health benefits. These include improved blood pressur...

Today on the blog we are joined by our wonderful guest blogger Jaime Bruce(Follow on Instagram here at https://www.instagram.com/jaybruce/. Jaime is an early years teacher from Australia who works in London. Her setting is play based, with a strong focus on sustained shared thinking, child-lead activities, and following individual interests.  Jaime 's guest blog today focuses on the joy of art. 

Walk inside the Early Years at my school, and the first thing you do is duck under the paintings and mobiles that hang from washing lines and “make-shift galleries” hanging everywhere. Head outside, and the chalk is in full use, the water colour paints are being liberally thrown at the prepared paper, and leaves and sticks are carefully lined up into patterns in the mud kitchen. The real joy of art in the Early Years, is that there is absolutely no definition of what really constitutes “art”. It permeates through every aspect of a child’s day: from a casual mark-make on the whiteboard of the...

This week we are joined by my wonderful member Jen from Mama's Den who is sharing with us her thoughts on supporting home learning during the Coronavirus outbreak. 

We have all been thrown into a new way of life this week and whilst some of us were already starting to implement a new, calmer hygge lifestyle into our homes it can be hard to stick to those new mindful practices when our normal is so abnormal.

Take time to breath, and think about the positives that will come as you take over the schooling of your child. You have always been their primary influence anyway so that is not going to change. So just do what your can, your child will continue to learn, this might just be more practical learning rather than academic. 

The thought of home schooling may fill many with dread and anticipation. I want to let you all into a little secret…. It’s ok to just let your children play.

Learning through play is vitally important for your child’s development and at this time in particular w...

This difficult time really makes us reconsider the actual purpose of education. It just shows that at the end of the day we shouldn’t be just preparing for a test that may never happen. This is the test for this generation.

Child led learning is our way of not teaching something just for Ofsted but a way to build problem solvers, support those who wonder and chase the impossible and it gives them a sense of empowerment. Allowing our children to not just survive but be extraordinary  in any situation.