Today Emma made some personalised pictures for the Seedlings. She chose the first letter of their name and drew a picture of an animal or object with the same initial so we could colour or trace.
Emma has been encouraging the Seedlings to recognise and make marks to represent their names.
What animal or object represents your name?
Today we made some lovely Hooting Valentine’s Day Owls for our loved ones. While we were making the owls we talked about who we love, Georgia shouted “I love you, Tracie” and Tracie explained it made her feel happy knowing that. We talked about how we all love each other, because we are a childminding family.
Fearne said “I love my mummy because I do”, then Georgia said “my daddy is my best friend.” When we asked Theo who he loved he didn’t make a peep. So Emma asked “do you love Mummy? Daddy? Pearl?” When Emma got to Thomas, Theo giggled out loud! We revisited the emotions we covered in an activity last week to explain how we express ourselves. Here are some of the finished Hooting Owls!
This is Phyllis’ garden in January 2021. It was very cold that week and we have had some snow.
Phyllis’ little Kitten is Hebe and we’re sure you’ll see a lot of him during the challenge.
We had a lovely Zoom workshop today with Izzy and our friends.
The Seedlings loved being on ‘Tracie’s Laptop’ and joining in. We cant wait to see everyone again next week!
We are three generations of gardeners starting a gardening challenge to see the difference in the ways we garden and grow!
We will all have the same seeds and grow them in our own ways. We will give regular updates and are looking forward to sharing the results. Follow the Garden Challenge with our hashtag GardenChallenge2021!
In July 2013, tennis tables were installed in Stanley Park by Liverpool City Council to celebrate the success of the 2012 Olympics! This picture was taken of Poppy and Chloe when they were just two and three!
So in 2020 we returned to take this flashback picture, taken six years later! They still cant play it! Maybe we should have tennis lessons?
As we’ve been on isolation this week, Poppy and Chelsea decided to watch the YouTube video of Simple Politic’s second session on ‘What Matters Most?’ from the comfort of Chelsea’s bed! The session started with some fun questions about ‘What Matters Most?’ to us: Reading, Playing Games or Making Videos. We put our favourites in a ranking order and discussed why they were ranked in that order.
Tatton then told us, if we had 45 minutes to split between the three activities, how much time would we spend on each activity? Chelsea split hers 25 mins on Reading and 20 mins on games because she doesn’t really make videos that often and she loves reading!
Our next question was which is better: Playing Games or Doing Chores? The participants in the interactive session were almost unanimous on Playing Games. However, Tatton pointed out that sometimes Doing Chores comes with rewards! Poppy chose Chores because she loves tidying and organising her room and toys!
The penultimate part of the session was a role playing moment. We were asked if we were the Prime Minister and had £5 million to spend on our services, how would we split the money? Out of Education, Hospitals and the Environment – but knowing that it takes at least £2 million to really make a difference.
This was one of our hardest questions so far from the series of sessions. Chelsea felt that Education could improve the hospitals and medicine sector in the future and also build on the sciences and awareness of looking after the environment at the current moment. Chelsea chose to give £2 million to Education, £2 million to Medicine and £1 million to the Environment, with hopes that a boost in Education could later garner awareness and knowledge of what we can do to help the Environment.
Whereas Poppy felt the Hospitals were in dire need of help at the moment and schools had enough at the moment (because they’re closed). She originally wrote £3 million to ‘Hospitals / Vaccine / Medicine / Cancer’ and £2 million to help the Environment. But later changed her decision to split the money more evenly: £2 million to Medicine, £2 million to helping the Environment and £1 million to schools. Even though she knew it wouldn’t make as much of a difference, she felt the Medicine sector and Environment were more important than schools at this present time.
Our last decision was a tough one. What is most important to us? Family, Community or the Country. We thought about why our chosen options mean more to us than the other options. Poppy’s choice ‘Family’ was based on her closest environment, whereas Chelsea chose the broader option of ‘Country’ as she believes in nationwide equality. That’s not to say she doesn’t love and care for her family and local community but when big decisions are made, these decisions trickle down into the local community and then into our family’s lives.
It was super interesting to see the views a of 9 year old, compared to the beliefs of her older sister of 26 years! We really enjoyed working together and pausing Tatton to have in-depth chats about why we make the decisions we make! Again, we talked about how there are no right or wrong answers in politics just your own!
You can watch the full video here! Get your children involved, ask questions, listen to different thoughts and opinions we all have!
This is Georgia and Fearne working very hard on their number work. They are concentrating and communicating well to support each others learning.
Emma has handmade the girls activity sheets to go alongside their personal next steps. Alfie thought he was missing out so Emma involved him in the activity.
Today Georgia showed Emma how well she has become at counting and recognising her numbers. Georgia even counted backward from five.
This year the theme in our ever-changing garden will be a rainbow explosion of colours to represent our hard-working Key Workers. So far we have looked through gardening magazines to find various plants we could use. All the children have chosen their favourite colours and plants, which we will incorporate within the two gardens.
Our BIG project will be to extend our pond area for all our wildlife. Our main pond is in a raised bed but the wildlife need more space so we’re looking to extend it across the bed. The children have asked for a water feature so this might make an appearance.
Over the last couple of years we have had so much success with our raised beds, however we need to make these changes. We are always finding new and exciting ways to garden. We’ll also be putting up the new greenhouse and VegTrugs.
We will keep you posted on the projects, so keep returning to our website to find out how its all gone throughout the seasons.
Tracie's Treasures 