About Us

Bridgit and Chloe are OFSTED ‘Outstanding’ Childminders based in Worthing, West Sussex, offering a professional and individual service for children and their families 0-8 years. Pebbles Childcare was started in 2015 by Bridgit to provide a holistic, educational and healthy home from home setting for your child. Collectively we have over 30 years experience in the…

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Life Ready, Not School Ready

Each year, we like to re-visit and discuss the overly used ‘school readiness’ term as our parents and children wait to find out what school they will be attending in September. ‘School Readiness’ has always been a particularly outdated term in our opinion, and for many people, ‘school readiness’ looks completely different from setting to setting. We…

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Child-Led Learning

We love how spontaneous our days are and how our entire play and pedagogy is led by the children and their interests; a perfect example of this is this week’s learning, which has been all about wood and exploring different properties! We started our week with a quick trip to the vets with Billie before…

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The Forgotten Frontline

Headlines of 2021 are full of Covid-19, death toll, R rates and the increasing pressure on our frontline NHS staff, and rightfully so, our NHS and all of our frontline health workers are doing an incredible job in the most dire circumstances, but are being under-appreciated and overlooked by our Government when it comes to…

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Conveyor Belt Christmas

Christmas is an exciting time of year; particularly for children in the Early Years; the learning opportunities and experiences are endless and the magic and wonder that can be created for the children is truly heartwarming. With such upheaval, confusion and change as a result of Covid-19 this year, even more reason to make this…

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Lockdown 2.0

When the Prime Minister announced the second national lockdown on Saturday evening, we, like the rest of the country were fed up and despondent, but so relieved to be able to remain open for all children, As a setting, we closed for the duration of the previous lockdown and so this will be our first…

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Lockdown 2.0

When the Prime Minister announced the second national lockdown on Saturday evening, we, like the rest of the country were fed up and despondent, but so relieved to be able to remain open for all children, As a setting, we closed for the duration of the previous lockdown and so this will be our first…

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Nature’s Playground

Outdoor play and physical activity have always been a prolific topic in the Early Years and an aspect of curriculum and provision we all focus on, particularly within a home-based childcare environment this can sometimes be an issue or an area practitioners desire to improve upon as result of space and locality, and we are…

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Balancing Mixed Age Groups

We’ve touched before on how we, as a home-based Childcare setting, meet the needs and reap the benefits of our children growing up within a mixed age group throughout their Early Years. But how does mixing ages present itself when the age gap is significantly greater and more apparent, as is currently the case as…

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A Loving Pedagogy & Children’s Wellbeing

We have spoken many times about how we adopt and embed the principles of Dr Jools Page’s work on ‘Professional Love’ and Tasmin Grimmer’s new research on a ‘Loving Pedagogy’ into our everyday practice and the ethos of our setting, but as we now reach the 5th week of re-opening in the midst of the…

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‘Catching Up’ – Life After Covid-19

This week, the term ‘catching up’ in relation to children’s learning has been thrown around countless times by the Government and Education ministers.What exactly are they referring to? Why do they feel that as the country begins to exit the lockdown, that the main priority for children is to ‘catch up’ academically? As we’ve touched…

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Our First Week Post Covid-19

Like many Early Years Settings and schools, we re-opened our setting on the 1st June 2020, albeit at reduced numbers and with only one childminder working currently until all of our families return. However, we spent the lockdown period planning, arranging, cleaning, organising and preparing for this moment to ensure it was the safest and…

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Home-Learning Support: Mud Kitchens

Mud kitchens are a popular and beneficial resource for any Early Years outdoor space, and despite the fact that once we return to operation and re-open, we won’t be able to use our mud kitchen for the interim (to minimise cross-contamination/infection risks.) a few parents have expressed an interest in either purchasing one to use…

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