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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...

Curiosity is a fundamental human trait. It’s a basic element of cognition, yet the biological function and neurological underpinning to this day remain poorly understood by scientists.

It can be very simply described as a desire to know or learn something. It’s that intrinsic drive towards ‘interesting’ situations, something peculiar, to find out about the world. How does it work? What will it do? Why is it there?

 But why? What is it about humans that make them curious? In its purest, caveman style form, learning about the world around us enables us to survive (except for cats, apparently curiosity kills them). We learn basic skills such as how and what to eat or drink, how to move to hunt and hide, how to stay warm and safe. And beyond this, we then learn how to thrive.

Now the world is rather different nowadays, and requires a completely different and far more complex range of skills (although I’m not sure which I personally deem to be more difficult - to chase down my dinne...

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...

If you don’t know by now, children and colours are like sunshine and the seaside- they can’t be imagined one without the other. I can remember the faces and personalities of some of the only children I’ver met who didn’t enjoy colour mixing. They were those children who would watch on act a safe distance; making connections, eyeing mixing techniques suspiciously, and delighting in the joy of others as they played. Perhaps not in Nursery, but certainly by Reception, these children would have joined in, whether it be for only a minute, or many many days of carefully considered work.

Unaided and unprompted, children see blobs of primary colours as invitation enough to mix. We have all placed, at some point in our teaching life, paints in beautiful pre-mixed palettes, awaiting children to paint a Picasso-esque masterpiece, only to find them making brown for the millionth time with a brush stirring in either hand. Whilst this genius of fine-motor control should be applauded, it can be ...

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...

Emotional strength is a funny old subject. I mean, what even is it? And how do we get it ourselves, let alone instil it into others? 

It’s generally agreed that there is a rise worldwide in mental health issues, particularly amongst children and young adults. But I can’t help questioning the figures we base this on. According to data, about 13% of the global population, some 971 million people, are currently suffering from some kind of mental disorder. But… is this new? Or are we just more aware of it? Is it now more acceptable to admit that we’re struggling? Are there now more avenues we can access for help? Are we now perhaps more socially aware and recognise that men or children can have issues too? Dementia is apparently the fastest-growing mental illness but is it? Or are we living longer and therefore there are just more age-related issues in the demographic?

In all honesty I can’t quite formulate an answer to all these questions in my own head, but what I really do believe ...

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...

A wonderful guest post by my member Jennifer Wooldridge (@mamasden)

Are you settling into your new rhythm?

Change can be really hard and they say it actually takes up to 7 weeks before we adapt. Think about times you may have been on a new health drive, whether a diet or starting at the gym the first few weeks are always the hardest.

We all have a daily routine which we are used to but now have to create a new balance in our lives, a rhythm at home over the coming weeks and this will help establish a new normal, a new sense of balance in our lives. I know we have all been feeling anxious of late but we need to start reflecting on the change and creating a new calm in our family lives.

Let’s take this time to recharge our batteries and to think about what we have taken for granted and the fast paced lifestyle we are used to. We have all had to stop and think and change our ways, whether willingly or for the greater good. But for lots of our children they have lost their routine an...