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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...

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 on our blog by our wonderful guest Sam Goldsworthy. Sam is an experienced childminder (go and give her a follow at https://www.facebook.com/SamGoldsworthyChildminding/) with a passion for learning outdoors and today she shares her wisdom for supporting learning at home in the garden. 

The garden is such a rich learning space within our setting which we access daily.

We often spent time outdoors just lying on the grass together watching the clouds float by talking about the shapes that we can see in the clouds. We then shut our eyes and talk about what we can hear around us - usually this is birds cheeping, the wind blowing through the trees and maybe cars and helicopters too. This sometimes leads in to Yoga in the garden - flapping like a bird, standing tall like a tree, lying straight like a stick.

We use natural treasures such as leaves, pine cones, flower petals etc that we find to make potions in our mud kitchen which encourages many mathematical opportunit...

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...

As a result of the Hygge training undertaken, we have taken on board the basic principles of Hygge, despite having previously implemented small elements of the ‘Hygee’ idea and building our ethos upon the idea of creating a cosy, inviting and special environment for the children in our care, we felt as a result of the training and further investigation into the Hygge principles and how this can relate and be implemented into Early Years Settings, we made a conscious decision to plan and create our learning environment around these principles as we believe that creating these ‘special moments’ and inviting, relaxing, cosy environments has incredible benefits on the children in our care in terms of their well-being, mood, behaviour and emotions.

As a setting, we have always tried to limit the amount of plastic on offer, but as a result of this training we decided to make even more of a conscious effort to do so; instead bringing in more loose parts, natural resources, soft furnishin...

Reading this from one of my Hygge in the Early Years Accredited students makes me feel so proud of their journey and all they've achieved.

Nurturing, supporting and allowing my students to flourish is what gives me a warm glow and makes me love my job even more!

"Starting my business back in December 2018 I was approached by a local authority officer who was supporting me with my ofsted registration. Sharon asked me “Laura I’ve never seen a provision like this before it’s wonderful what is your inspiration? What approach do you follow?”
I couldn’t reply I didn’t know myself, the only word I could give was “Hygge” but back then I didn’t truly understand the concept of hygge in the early years I just wanted to create an environment that brought the outdoors indoors, that was cosy and calming. A nature led approach that welcomed new children into my provision with a burst of light and opportunity.

It made me reflect and research, I wanted to be able to give my parents and OFSTED the...

Developing Cultural Capital in the Early Years

We are incredibly lucky to have a guest blog this week from Chloe Grey (AKA Miss Grey and Play).

Chloe studied her early years PGCE in Leeds and has since taught in Reception, Year 1 and Nursery in a range of schools. She has also worked as a nanny and spent time in schools in Australia and New Zealand including Montessori Settings. Chloe is currently studying for my Masters in Education and teaching in a school Nursery.

What is cultural capital?

Cultural capital is a term coined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. He discussed ‘field’ as being like the cultural environment and ‘habitus’ as being the skills and attributes we possess relating to these cultural norms and values. This has been applied to education with the idea that some children would have had more culturally diverse experiences that may put them at an advantage. Ofsted have used the term in the new inspection framework e.g.“Cultural capital is the essential knowled...

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  
• -eg people 
• Off
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1.  Identify Negativity