Truly A Children's Garden!!

This slightly wobbly line of lovingly planted pea seedlings makes my heart swell with pride.  We had planted one together with one child digging the hole and the other squeezing the seedling out of the pot and putting it in the hole.  I realised that I hadn't got my camera and went back to the house for it.  When I returned there were three quarters of the row planted absolutely beautifully with the children working together to achieve it!  I was truly touched.  Although we do a lot of gardening together I sometimes wonder whether it means much to the children.  Yes they love to do it and are always very enthusiastic and hands on but it seems repetitive sometimes. Seeing this happen though reminded me that repetition is important for children as it is how they become competent at a task, and that the many times we have sown and thinned and planted on and watered really did have value for the children.  It isn't enough to plant a single sunflower seed once a year, children need to have a garden to really be involved in whether it is a series of patio planters or a little corner of the garden. The skill, absorption, co-operation, pride and ownership i witnessed was something special that I won't forget for a long time!

How do Plants Grow?

I am doing a Montessori Early Years Teaching Qualification and my latest assignment requires that I write a planning web for a topic before choosing one of the 'cultural activities' and doing it with the children.  As it is currently a 'hot topic' with the children here, I decided to plan for 'How do Plants Grow?'I thought of lots of things to extend children's knowledge about plants and their growth and decided to share them here as I'd like to do lots of them and post about them and then you will all know what I am talking about!  I have combined Montessori curriculum headings with EYFS to suit all interested parties!!

Literacy (Communication, Language and Literacy)

• Booklets or spinning books (i-dials) on the life cycles of seeds.
• Sequencing cards on stages of growth.
• Books and stories
• Language tray with initial sounds that relate to seeds and plants (b-bean, p-pot, c-compost, s-sun, w-water, g-grow, l-leaf)
• Word wall - new vocabulary relating

Mathematics (Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy)

• Measuring the plants as they grow.
• Ordering seeds and beans from largest to smallest.
• Making bird cake from seeds - following a recipe card.
• Volumes of compost in pots.
• Measuring rainfall.

Creative (Creative Development)

• Make bean collages.
• Sunflowers - Van Goch painting, pallet of colours mixed to match and paint sunflowers.
• Natural paints using mud, dandelions, other flowers, leaves.
• Maracas with dried beans/rainmakers.
• Music and Movement - growing as plants grow.
• Songs and poems about growing.

Activities of daily living (Physical Development - fine motor)

• Sorting beans.
• Transferring with tweezers or tongs.
• Spooning beans/seeds.
• Pouring dried beans and seeds.
• Matching seed packets to seeds.

Cultural (Knowledge and Understanding of the World)

• Cooking and tasting recipes from around the world that use beans.
• Biology - set up a wormery and put leftovers from the children's fruit into it.
• Botany - parts of a plant/ what parts of a plant do we eat?/ life cycle of a bean
• Science - what plants need to grow/ celery stalks and food colouring/ dark box for plant to grow to the light.
• Leaf shapes/types.

Sensorial (CD, PSRN)

• Paint colour swatches in green to match to leaves of plants as they grow.
• Matching herbs by their smell.
• Leaf skeletons in the nature basket.
• Matching shapes to plant related items - cone (pot) seed(ovoid) etc.

Although Montessori curricula don't specifically have a section for Personal, Social and Emotional Development, by the approach that Montessori setting take, PSED is supported through all other activities, so you can look for aspects of this as the children take part in activities, just as you would normally.  I'm hoping to post about these activities as we go along, and will link them back to this plan as I go to make it easier to find them.  I'm anticipating that we will spend all summer investigating the way things grow though, so don't be disappointed if it isn't all here in the next couple of weeks.... if you want more information about any of these activities now, please leave a comment and ask and i will do my best to help you out!

Writing to Penpals

This is my daughter concentrating on writing a letter to respond to our penpals at 'The Playhouse', set up through the childmindinghelp forum.  We are really enjoying corresponding with them and it is great on so many levels because letter writing is dying out somewhat these days, yet it remains so special to receive a handwritten letter.  If you don't want to write to penpals, you could encourage children to wriet to their parents, or grandparents (especially lovely if they live far away and don't see their grandchild often!)

• PSED - dispositions and attitudes as the children get excited about receiving mail and then replying; making relationships as they work on a reply together and working at making a relationship through writing to new friends; sense of community as they learn about others and how others live and what they like to do.
• CLL - language for communication, linking sounds and letters, reading and writing.
• PSRN - handling money to buy the stamp we need
• KUW - Time as they wait for a reply and think about what others are doing in other places; communities as they become more interested in what people in different palces are doing; talking about how the post works (a bit of history about how post used to work)
• PD - fine motor control drawing pictures and writing words to their friends; using equipment and materials by folding the paper to go in the envelope.
• CD - make a postbox together to add in to role play.

Some other ideas I have tried are to find writing paper that ties in with anything that the children are interested in.... these are quite simple to find through searching google.  We have started a scrap book to keep the letters in and have decorated the front with these realistic stamps.

if there are any readers who would like to team up with other settings to exchange letters, please e-mail me at littleblossomschildminding@googlemail.com and I will try to pair you up!

Emotionally and Socially Capable Children

I have been looking into aspects of social and emotional development and how best to support it as part of my February planning, and I read an article that talked about helping children who were experiencing domestic violence at home, and how to help them develop resilience to cope with it.  It occurred to me that being resilient was important for all children as they all face challenges at different times.  The main points from the article were:

• Maintain a strong one-to-one relationship with each child.
• Provide safe ways to communicate worries other than by talking about them.  This could be through mark-making, puppetry or making up stories.
• Model a rich 'feelings' vocabulary; anxious, afraid, confused, embarrassed. Putting them with facial expressions helps children to learn that everyone has feelings.
• Encourage toddlers to empathise by 'translating' the body language and feelings of other children.
• Ensure that children see both men and women engaging in caring and helping roles and getting along well.
• Be a good role model and always show the behaviour that you expect.
• Identify unique and special traits in each child and tell them about it. (see the 'I love you the purplest' activity in Febraury planning.)
• Display delight and wonder at the little things in life, like a sunny day.
• Provide sensory actvities indoors and out to aid stress relief.
• Connect children to nature whenever possible - resarch has shown that experiencing the natural rythms build a sense of attachment and security in children.
• Have a pet - they provide unconditional love for children!
• Make plenty of time for free play - children use play to make sense of he world around them.
• Give children choices to provide them with a sense of control.
• Let children help with preparing food, serving drinks, watering plants etc - this makes them realise that they do make a positive difference.
• Maintain a predictable routine - this doesn't mean always having lunch bang on twelve o clock, but does mean always setting the same table and serving in the same way; recognisbale routines help children to feel safe and secure.
• Provide an uncluttered learning space to help children concentrate.
• Provide fewer resoures at any one time by rotating them, to avoid over-stimulating children.
• Create small cosy spaces indoors and out.
• Use postitive discipline; work on resolving conflicts with the children.

Adapted from Nursery World Article, Feb 11 2010

There are many elements that I do already, but some that I would like to introduce and some I am tussling a little with to think of ways that I could incorporate the ideas into a home-setting. 

One thing that I do well already is: delight and wonder at little things.
One thing to start tomorrow is: provide fewer resources out at one time.
One thing to think and plan for is: making cosy spaces indoors and out.

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!