Wednesday, 25 February 2015


Magformers, magnetic colourful shapes, are one of our newer resources in my setting, purchased after seeing them used at a toddler group. They seem to instantly engage all the children who ranged from two to eight years in age. 

 The children initially made patterns through sticking the shapes onto a magnetic whiteboard, making two-dimensional patterns. Their curiosity soon began to shine when they all started building far more creative structures. The shapes click together very easily and are so colourful that they maintained the children's interest. 
There are so many benefits to be gained from this toy from developing both imagination and co-ordination through to learning about shapes and colours. We also talked about the magnetic properties, introducing our big magnet for interest. I was so impressed with these, they shall definitely be used a lot!

Thursday, 5 February 2015

Winter Beach Play

We like to take advantage of living so close to the beach and all the learning opportunities that this provides. We wrapped up warm and braved the beach.

The children are always fascinated by the stream and after experimenting their throwing abilities they instigated a game of jumping into the water to see who could make the biggest splash. 

The children worked together trying to make sandcastles, even ensuring they did the magic tap on the bucket before turning it over. They also lay together talking while exploring the sand with their hands. 

Finally, to burn off any energy that was left, they all wanted to take turns throwing the ball for the dog who belonged to a fellow childminder. Finally we dried off and very much appreciated the nice warm blankets waiting for us back at the house. 

Tuesday, 3 February 2015


In order to enhance listening for specific sounds this week we began by making shakers. Through providing rice, beans and pasta the children practised controlling their movements by using spoons to transfer these into their choice of container. When they had done this we sealed them up and painted them.  

We listened to the sound that the shakers made and tried to imitate these with our mouths. 

Finally we added in some music and coloured scarves and the children used their shakers to add to the music and then dance with their scarves, practising swinging them around in circles as well as high and low and slow and fast.