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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Meeting Children’s Emotional Needs in light of Covid-19

As we prepare practically to re-open the setting on the 1st June (if the Government deem it safe to do so) we have risk assessed, put plans in place for hygiene and safety to ensure we are minimising the risk of infection once we re-open, but another important aspect of the return to the setting…

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Promoting Positive Approaches to Food & Mealtimes

With Covid-19 throwing all of our lives into disarray, routines out of the window, and contributing to noticeable changes in our children’s routines and behaviours – perhaps mealtimes have become a struggle in your household or setting. Many of our current cohort are at the age and stage where they may become more ‘vocal’ in…

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Preparing for School Transitions – Covid 19.

In this blog we will re-visit our previous piece on getting children ‘school ready’ and what the much-disputed term ‘school readiness’ means for us. In light of the current situation we will also touch upon on how we intend to work with you and the schools to support our school leaver children with their transition…

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What Next? Thinking About Life Post Covid-19.

With so much uncertainty surrounding our sector, our businesses and our current situations, many of us have started to think ‘What next?’ Is re-opening going to be a smooth and easy transition? There will be many challenges, not only are there business and policy implications to consider for those settings with more staff, but the…

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Activity Guide: 5 years+

This week we will be focusing on activity and learning ideas for our school aged children. Whilst most children will have been set formal learning and school work from their school to be working on whilst their schools are closed, we felt it was important to provide some ideas for fun, play-based experiences that children…

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Activity Guide: 3-5 years.

As reality sets in and we all begin to adjust to our new ‘normal’ of being and working from home with young children in tow, we thought we would offer some virtual support and advice on ways in which to keep the Under 5’s occupied at home. We will be posting an age group per…

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