Friday's Favourites!

Well it's the end of a busy week and time for me to relax and enjoy looking through all my favourite blogs.  I'll add a few to the sidebar as time goes by for you to link to and have a look at, but for now, here are my favourite picks of great activities:

• I love these 'heart pocket pillows' as a project for older children to sew, or for you to make for younger children as a gift.  it would be fun to collect colourful outgrown clothes or thrifted ones from bootsales and charity shops to make hearts with.
• This idea for re-telling the story of the Gingerbread Man would work really well as a story sack... it is fab inspiration to make up some more ideas for books and stories that are popular with your little ones at the moment!
• Dolls are the be-all and end-all for one little one in my setting and I loved this idea for extending her play (scroll down to see the bath of water with dolls in it!)

I have added the blogs featured onto my sidebar favourites..... do you have any favourite blogs to share?? Please leave me a comment with the address!

Crazy About Parsnip Soup!

My mindees love this recipe, today one little one, who is 18 months old, ate three bowls of the stuff, along with two slices of bread..... possible growth spurt coming I think!!  It is such a simple recipe and a lovely 'winter warmer' after a frosty walk home from a morning's activities!  I am making ours with the 'Christmas' parsnips that we planted last summer, but the ground was too frozen to get them out for Christmass so we are enjoying them now!!  Homegrown the taste is something else!!

Ingredients:

• Two carrots
• One stick of celery
• One small leek
• One onion
• Four big parsnips!
• 100g red lentils (optional)

Roughly chop the carrots, celery, leek and onion and put in a pan over a medium heat with some olive oil.  When it starts to sizzle, turn the heat down and sweat the veg with a lid on the pan for 15 mins, stirring every so often.  Whilst this is happening, peel and chop the parsnips, then add to the sweaty veg along with the lentils and stir thorooughly round.  ( I usually add some black pepper here too).  Pour in enough water to cover the veg and have an extra inch.  bring to the boil, reduce to simmer and cook for half an hour with the lid on.  When parsnips are soft, remove from the heat and blend.

I prepare this in advance then reheat thoroughly before serving..... be careful reheating in the pan though as once blended the soup will puff splots of hot soup out of the top as it begins to simmer again!

Serve with yummy brown or granary bread and you have a hot meal with all the essential amino acids in, perfect for growing minds and bodies!!

Winter Olympics 2010

There is lots of information on the Official Website and various other sites if you have a look around.  There are some nice things here for older children, I will be using the skating boot dot-to-dot with my oldest as she LOVES skating at the minute!  These are nice too, to dot around and get the children used to the different sports that they will see!  It will be novel to have the TV on to watch things as it rarely gets turned on in our house during the week, I think the children will enjoy the sounds of the crowds jangling cow bells and cheering as well as the sports themselves. Here are a few of the ideas that I might use this week:

Knowledge and Understanding of the World

• Collect Newspaper clippings and pictures of both able-bodied and paralympic athletes, display them.
• Put a red dot on the world map over the location of the Olympics.
• The logo is based on an ancient symbol - build an Inukshuk from cardboard boxes or blocks – explain the meaning (pointed the way for the Inuit peoples of Canada).
• Watch coverage of the sports so that the children understand what they are.

Creative Development

• Make an Olympic Torch.
• Make dough/clay medals.
• Make an ice-skating rink for the small world figures to ice skate on, to promote imaginative play.
• Similarly build a bob-sleigh run with cut open toilet roll tubes!

Physical Development

• Mini Olympics – run with a balloon held between the knees.
• Two children together hold a balloon between their tummies and try to get across the room without it dropping.
• Sledging in a flat cardboard box with rope handle at the front to pull.
• Throwing Olympic rings over posts.
• Jumping from mat to mat (Olympic colours, saxan bath mats from Ikea!).

Communication, Language and Literacy

• O is for Olympics – what other things begin with O, could make a display or mini book.
• Talk about what you are seeing on the television.

Problem Solving Reasoning and Numeracy

• Shape of the circles.
• Counting them.
• Measuring out cooking ingredients to make butter tarts.
• Winter Olympics Bingo

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

• Make Olympic rings and explain what they stand for, they represent the five major land areas of the world; Africa, Asia, America, Europe and Australasia.  The rings are interlocked to show friendship.
• Make paper printables of the mascots; Miga, Quatchi and Sumi. Older children could design their own mascots, younger ones could colour some in.
• “With Glowing Hearts” is the motto, can the children think of their own motto?

 

 

A little Bit of Spring!

I found the inspiration for this from two sources, the first was a box of spring bulbs that somehow never did get planted out in the Autumn, and the second was from Maya*Made. The children had a great time potting up hyacinths and crocus and tulips.  The littlest one was particularly taken with transferring the compost from the bucket to her pot!  it gave me the idea to put compost out for messy play next week, along with pots, bulbs and mini garden tools!

Being Self-reflective

Like risk assessment, this is something that we all do during the day as we work, it is as simple as wondering why the children aren't interested in the playdough this time when usually they really enjoy it - is it old and hard? Are they fed-up of the same old tools to use with it? Are they uncomfortable using it at an adult sized table? Then we try something new - make a new batch, put out a tub of pebbles to use with it, or set it out on a tray on the floor for a change.  Then we observe to see the effect, and we have learned something! Self reflective practice is just this, but writing it down can be important.  it can help to focus our mind on exactly what needs to be done, and is also paper evidence that we are striving to provide the best standard of care that we can.  It will help to complete the SEF (Self Evaluation Form) when you come to do it.


This link from the NCMA is a really useful booklet to work through to start you off with reflective practice. 

Another way to go about it is by auditing each area of your provision systematically.  Our childminding group (called Little Foxes!) has begun this process and we have decided to work through each of the 16 sections of the EYFS.  We are beginning with section 1.2 of 'A Unique Child', looking at Inclsuive Practice.  After looking at all areas carefully, write an action plan detailing what changes you want to make, how you will make them, by when and then sign and date them when completed.

Whichever option you use, or a combination of both, I would recommend attaching copies of evidence to the sheets you write on; evidence could be a list of policies you have, a photocopy of an observation made, a copy of a planning sheet, photographs of an event, e-mails between you and other organisations, copies of training certificates, articles/information you have read that have informed your practice, questionnaires from parents.... there are many many examples!

Child Safety Week June 20-27 2010

The Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) runs Child Safety Week every year with a different theme.  This years is titled 'Make Time for Safety' and will be supported with a free toolkit if you sign up as wanting to take part.  I have found their resources fantastic and really targeted at young children, building skills they will be able to use to keep themselves safe as they grow older.

You can sign up to receive a monthly CAPT bulletin which has up-to-date information about safety issues affecting children, usually with helpful links.  One that caught my eye in January's bulletin was information and links about carbon monoxide poisening.  I use it to update my risk assessments and review my health and safety policies as necessary.

"One Step Ahead is a new wall chart for parents of babies and young children. It consists of a matrix which matches the child’s age and development to the hazards in the home it is likely to encounter at any particular stage from birth to two. It is easy to understand with colourful illustrations. if you would like a free sample, email kate.bines@capt.org.uk for a copy!" (CAPT, January 2010 newsletter)

February Planning.....

I am doing things a little differently in February, for three reasons:

1. I found planning a single day fun and inspiring when I did it for Australia day and I want to try that a few times for the start of the Winter Olympics and Pancake Day for example.
2. I have planned a lot to explore the two weeks of Chinese New Year and I don't want to overload either me or the children!!
3. I recently went to a training day that recommended planning observations to cover all areas of learning and development, and taking a systematic approach so I'm trying to bring that into my monthly planning in a meaningful way.

Therefore I will be exploring Social and Emotional Development over the next couple of weeks.  I will be looking reflectively at my setting to evaluate how I currently support children's social and emotional development and what I could introduce to improve this area of provision.  I will post about it as I go through the process!  I have downloaded Social and Emotional Aspects of Development from the National Strategies site and and will use it to help me evaluate and plan!

I will do a focussed narrative observation for around 15 minutes if possible on each of the little ones and evaluate it to see what I could do to support them in their development.

As usual I have some new books to introduce!! I Love You the Purplest is a beautiful book based on a mother and her sons, but this can easily be adapted to suit a childminder and her little ones!!  I will follow this book with an activity where we will write special things about each child on coloured hearts, such as things they are good at, things we love about them etc, we will put them up on the wall afterwards and read them every day!  The other book I have is called The Crayon Box That Talked and I will follow that up with an activity where the children draw pictures of different people on crayon shapes and then make them up into one big packet, for the little ones I will cut out pictures of children from magazines for them to glue on to the crayons..

I'm looking forwards to exploring Social and Emotional Development!