Author: Tracie Dowling

I have worked in childcare for over thirty years. I have been a Foster Care Parent, a Childminding Network Co-Ordinator and now I work as a Registered Childminder and Childminder Mentor for the Department for Education.
Posted in rangers, wanderers

Spooky Goings On

Posted on by Tracie Dowling

We had lots of fun at a Halloween party for the ‘Jazz It Up’ fundraising event. We started the day getting our outfits ready, painting our faces and body parts with blood and guts!

We began with six lovely children and ended up with a fearsome cat, a scary clown, a bloody school girl, a spider boy, a spider girl and a wolf!

  • Poppy
  • Chloe
  • Jack and Hannah
  • Martha and Ivor

The children decorated Tracie up as a moody pumpkin and made her go and sit in the pumpkin patch for a photo!

Pumpkin Tracie

We had fun joining in with spooky games, dance competitions, find the spider, balloon popping and enjoyed eating fingers in rolls with sticky blood!

We enjoyed ourselves so much we decided to have another spooky day. We made pumpkin prints, played spooky snap and had afternoon tea, with wiggly worms, creepy eyeballs, long fingers, pumpkin soup, and spider cakes. Yuck!

Pumpkin Prints
Posted in rangers

What a Pavlova!

Posted on by Tracie Dowling

We have been waiting and waiting for our raspberries to grow since the beginning of summer. Poppy has been waiting to make raspberry coulis and Faith wanted to make raspberry pavlova. This week, while we were tidying the garden ready for autumn, we cut back the blueberry bush and to our delight, found GIANT RASPBERRIES!

Our Raspberry

Silly Tracie, they’re not summer fruiting raspberries, they’re autumn raspberries!

Posted in wanderers

Moving On Up!

Posted on by Tracie Dowling

This September we had a lovely tea party to wish our two Schoolies Martha and Lily good luck with starting big school! We looked back at the last four years, how much they have grown and all the activities, fun and laughter we have shared along the way!

  • Martha
  • Lily

We are all looking forward to updates and visits from you both.

Posted in Uncategorized

Feeding Frenzy

Posted on by Tracie Dowling

We’ve had loads of fun this week cleaning and mending our old bird boxes and feeders, ready for the Autumn bird rush. We made a tall feeding station to keep Fizzy, Flora and Rosie from frightening them away! We are hoping our Robin, who we call Christopher, comes back for tea soon!

Our New Feeding Station


Posted in Uncategorized

Welcome to my Website

Posted on by Tracie Dowling

Hello! I’m Tracie and I’m an OFSTED registered Childminder. I work from my home in Anfield looking after children aged 0-12 years. On this website you will find information about my setting, activities, vacancies and my day to day childminding life. 

This website supports all kinds of parents, childminders, nursery nurses and other childcare professionals. 

If you are a parent looking for availability check my vacancies page.

If you are thinking about starting childcare feel free to roam my site for inspiration and tips, or you can contact me for support.

If you have a child with me already, you can see what they’ve been getting up to in their age group page. 

I hope you find what you’re looking for, and if you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Posted in Garden Classroom, Seedlings, wanderers

Homemade Potted Herb Fence

Posted on by Tracie Dowling

The children loved helping Tracie make this herb fence. First we used the electric screwdriver to put screws in place to hold the pots to our fence. They have moulded holes on the back to make them easy to attach (from IKEA).

Herb Fence

We then went over to the cold frame to pick the herbs we wanted to display. We chose Curry Plant, Rosemary, Lavender, Coriander, Chives and Mint. The whole fence was so pretty and fragrant the children spent the day going over and smelling them. We even had a bee visit us.