St David's Day

As the parents of the children in my care know, at the beginning of each year I produce a planning document detailing dates throughout the year that we may celebrate - I make it clear that I will always follow the current interests of the children, if a child is not interested in the things I had planned, or has other interests at that point in time then I will not plough ahead with my planning regardless.

Last Friday was St. David's Day - I was only caring for O, and on Fridays when it is much quieter than our very busy Thursdays, O likes to do activities that I plan, as well as going to our usual Friday morning group.  We talked about St. David's Day, and O was excited to tell me that he had been to Wales.  We talked about the daffodils and O made a lovely pinwheel daffodil - we also looked at the daffodils that O planted a very long time ago and were delighted to see that they were growing in their little pots.

After lunch O helped me to make some Welsh cakes - this was a great baking activity for O, as he doesn't really like the food mixer that we have used to make our fairy cakes in the past, and we didn't need the food mixer as we mixed everything by hand!  O helped me to weigh the ingredients, then he enjoyed the sensory experience of mixing everything with his hands - the butter was very squishy, and the eggs were slimy - it was very good fun!

I cooked the cakes, and O ate the first one when it was warm straight out of the pan - he said they were yummy!

Wax crayon sun catchers

Over the past two weeks J and I have been doing quite a few different Autumnal activities which have either consisted of things we have done previously, or have been similar to things that we have done previously.  I like to try new things with the children, and generally they enjoy doing new activities too, so with that in mind I decided that we would have a go at making wax crayon sun catchers.

J and I chose some crayons in Autumnal colours and then after a brief explanation as to why we have to be careful, J set about grating the crayons onto a sheet of greaseproof paper.  This took a while!

Once we had enough grated wax I put a second sheet of greaseproof paper over the wax and with the iron on the lowest setting (and with J removed from the very immediate vicinity) I ironed the wax gratings until they melted.  J was amazed at the blob that we created!  I however wasn't - I had hoped for something pretty, but we had used far too much dark coloured wax and it just looked horrid!  So we tried again with much brighter colours which produced a much nicer melted blob!

We covered the wax to clear contact paper on both sides, I punched two holes and J helped me to thread a ribbon through the holes so that he could hang his sun catcher up - all we need now is some sun!

Butterfly crafts

We have been learning all about the lifecycle of a butterfly over the last few weeks.  As such we have made some lovely butterfly crafts.

The children painted some card butterfly templates - I showed them how to paint one side and fold it over to make the pattern symmetrical - some of the children chose to use that method and others chose to just paint it all - they were all beautiful!

Today J and M made a simple butterfly.  First they coloured a wooden peg with Sharpie markers (I attached the peg to a piece of cardboard to make it easier for the children to hold and colour in) - just look at the concentration on their faces!

Then very carefully we painted a piece of kitchen roll with our (home made) watercolour paints, taking lots of care not to rip the paper.

We added goggly eyes to our pegs and once the paper was dry scrunched it up to make wings - ta da, two lovely butterflies!

Making rainbows

After a day spent getting very wet at the park, and then marvelling at the clear blue sky and sunshine, I decided it would be apt to make rainbows!  I provided the children with a piece of white card, strips of coloured paper, PVA glue and spreaders.  I explained to the children that they need to put blobs of glue at the end of each strip of paper then hold them in place and count to 10 in order to make the glue stick.  There was lots of counting to 10 during this activity!


The finished pictures were lovely - I didn't tell the children that they had to put their paper in a particular order.

Easter Crafts

The children have made some lovely Easter crafts....

 The children made Easter chicks, which had a scrummy Easter surprise inside!

We marbled eggs.

The children made Easter masks which look very cute!

We made Easter crowns.

And we got very messy making scrummy Easter Rice Krispie cakes, mmmm!