Blog

“Strive to make everyday the best day of your life, because there is no good reason not to.” Hal Elrod

Hygge Case Study: Starting with a very colourful environment

Nov 19, 2020

Little Bird’s Preschool is a charity run preschool which sits in the heart of the beautiful town of Swanage Dorset. It has always been a popular preschool over its history and has certainly moved with the times. As with many Preschools the Little bird’s environment was very colourful and busy with bright pictures, posters and backing paper covering every possible wall and space. Nearly all the toys and resources were plastic which limited the children’s imaginations.

Step forward to January 2018. The Preschool was taken over by Jodie Edmunds, and Jude French became her deputy. Together they had a vision to transform Little Birds into a more natural and simulating environment. The other preschool practitioners jumped aboard, and the process began. Being a charity run preschool it meant that we had to do a lot of fundraising to enable us to buy resources and start the transformation. Our preschool office was situated within the school’s staff room which made it very hard for us to have ...

Create STEM Opportunities with Potion Making

Nov 01, 2019

Who loves potion making?

Today we have made some great mixtures but even better so much learning has happened- From predicting to problem solving!

We’ve explored making ‘Witches Blood’ and watched it fizz and bubble as the bicarbonate of soda combined with the vinegar.

We also made ‘Goblins Snot ‘mixing together cornflour, water, green colouring and chia seeds.

We popped our mixture into bottles and wrote our own potion labels too.
According to the children tomorrow we are making a spell book!!

Resourcing

Old white shirts (Lab coats)
Safety goggles
A variety of different sized flasks, containers and bottles (Try adding some measuring cylinders and jugs too)
Wooden spoons
Slotted spoons
Variety of measuring spoons
Weighing scales
Blank spell books to write in
Sticky labels to make up names for their potions
Pipettes and turkey basters
Pretend spiders, cobwebs, eyeballs
Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson

Ingredients (Supervision of play and risk assessment...

I Changed To Child Led Learning And Never Looked Back

Aug 30, 2019

The Art of Letting Go by Cornisheyfsteacher

I was often told that it takes a certain type of person to become a teacher – even more specifically; an early years teacher. Passionate, caring, organised, dedicated, inspired, motivated, resourceful, thoughtful… the list is endless. The responsibility and privilege that comes with the job, having a chance to make a difference and be a part of, arguably, the most important stage of a child’s development, is an honour to say the least. I love my job, I enjoy my job, but I completely understand why it is one of the most challenging professions to be in. The workload, the expectations, the weekends lost to ‘I just need to catch up on…’, the last minute scrutinties, lesson observations, it is never-ending. I am at the start of my career. Now approaching my third year of teaching in a Reception class. I want to share the start of my journey, some of my biggest revelations and the sense I have made of a sector that is continuously evolving.

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