Blog

Guest Post by childminder Jodie Williams @jodiewilliamschildminding 

Teaching children about nature and giving them the opportunity to be outdoors exploring is a very important part of our day. I found the child thrived when doing outdoor activities especially in the local woodland areas.

They love to collect objects, bringing them back to the setting and incorporating them into their play and exploration.

Over the past year it has become more important to be able to be outdoors, exploring in our own little group setting. Which has helped all of us to cope with the current pandemic & changes.

This is why I have now started to change how I teach and the resources I use. I haven’t got much space to store lots of one use resources. So this change has definitely allowed me to minimise resources to ones that provide the most learning opportunities.

We now have a lovely collection of natural resources. A variety of baskets containing small logs, log slices, stones, & sticks. Also ...

My obsession with classroom environments began when I first visited St John’s C of E Primary School. From the moment I walked in I was struck by the calm atmosphere and serenity it brought to their children. My colleague and I whispered to each other is disbelief “it’s just so calm”. Upon walking back into my own classroom I was smacked in the face with bright colours and loud noises! Everything felt over stimulating and busy by comparison; as if there were balls of high energy bouncing around the walls! From then onwards I was hooked into finding ways of calming my classroom and moulding the environment to generate the same serene feeling I’d experienced at St John’s.

I began with the lights! First of all, I wanted to reduce the lighting, I’m lucky to have two large windows and a half glass door within my room; meaning that most days there is sufficient natural light filling the space. So I borrowed a set of ladders and set about reducing the fluorescent lighting. All of my ceilin...

Growing plants and veggies with the children

As you all know we love being outdoors so this week we chose to share with you our growing and planting adventures.

We feel that children should be aware of where their food comes from and this way they can learn and experience this first hand as well as taking ownership in caring for their plants each day. We feel there are many benefits in doing this including educational as well as opening more time outdoors.

The children are always keen to help in the garden . We plant many veggies and also keep chickens. They like to feed the chickens snacks and collect the eggs which they enjoy for their lunch. We also use these for our baking sessions too.

We visit the garden centre often to buy our supplies such as compost, seed potatoes and seeds which encourages independence choosing and paying for the items. One little girl has a toy bunny which she takes every where - during our last visit to the garden centre she picked up a packet of car...

Two years ago, I spent twelve weekends with other people who worked with young children, completing a certificate in Therapeutic Play. Amongst us there were teaching assistants, teachers, child psychologists, a woman who worked with newly fostered children, and pastoral care workers from all settings. The course ran alongside term time at school, which meant I was able to use a lot of what I learned on those weekends immediately with children on Mondays. Whilst I could harp on and on about all manner of things I picked up in that course, the one I kept and use regularly is WAIT; Why Am I Talking?

As adults, we find it odd when a space forms between us that isn’t filled with chat. That space can really feel unbearable to some, and can lead to over-thinking, gross discomfort, and even an unsettled doubt of ones own grasp of social skills. In reality, however, our more rational brain probably knows that a peaceful silence is often better than whatever light conversation we will try...

Story telling/ small world play and nature

As a setting we are always outside exploring the outdoors whether it be the beach, woods, National Trust places or simply our garden. We feel being outdoors is as important as introducing books and rhymes into the children’s every day life so why not combine the two. We do this regularly and will pack props and story books based on the themes and childrens interests into our daily bag and take them out with us.

 We find that by using props out and about grasps the children’s attention a lot more than sitting and listening on a rug. The children want to be involved, they want to take turns to hold the props - they will also use the props to retell and re enact the story later on in their play. Recently we visited a local National Trust place and explored the mud kitchen - we took Tiger who came to Tea story with us as it is a favourite and we felt that this would link in beautifully with the physical play around the mud kitchen. We read the s...

Story telling/ small world play and nature

As a setting we are always outside exploring the outdoors whether it be the beach, woods, National Trust places or simply our garden. We feel being outdoors is as important as introducing books and rhymes into the children’s every day life so why not combine the two. We do this regularly and will pack props and story books based on the themes and childrens interests into our daily bag and take them out with us.

We find that by using props out and about grasps the children’s attention a lot more than sitting and listening on a rug. The children want to be involved, they want to take turns to hold the props - they will also use the props to retell and re enact the story later on in their play. Recently we visited a local National Trust place and explored the mud kitchen - we took Tiger who came to Tea story with us as it is a favourite and we felt that this would link in beautifully with the physical play around the mud kitchen. We...

What happens next?

I was delighted to be part of a zoom conference on Sunday entitled ‘Which Way Now? Creating a Better Education System after Lockdown’. The panel consisted of speakers including EYFS, Primary, Secondary and Union Leaders; although they apologised for the lack of diversity within the panel and promised to be back with representatives from SEND and Post 16 amongst others. I listened with great interest to Elaine Bennett’s truly impassioned speech about the value and importance of the Early Years in education, and how we can use this horrendous experience to prompt big changes to our current system.

Elaine spoke at length about how the Early Years is at the forefront of education, but why? What is it we do so well? Well I think the Lockdown has highlighted a few key factors:

• We already value parents as playing a key role in children’s learning and have effective working partnerships with them. We understand that parents are experts in their child and are th
...

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...

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...

We are so incredibly lucky this week to be joined by the highly creative Zoë a Reception Lead Teacher. We are going to be looking at how we can resource to create curiosity, intrigue and excitement and then use this as a hook to deepen levels of learning. 

Finding the perfect items to enhance my Reception setting has been a labour of love and turned into a real passion and perhaps a little bit of an obsession! I scour the second hand venues and sales, charity shops, local selling pages and car boot sales as well as eBay, Wish, Amazon. Wherever I am I consider how I can use these items to enhance my provision; to bring an element of wonder,  to create an aspect of curiosity that goes beyond picking something up for the first time. This intrigue will fuel imagination,  invite a friend along for the journey,  transform into something completely new or take them to a once uninhabited place. Sometimes it is an unbelievable bargain that cannot be passed up on. I think I have a collecto...