Tracie Dowling

The King and Queen’s Coronation

Posted on 14th May 202314th May 2023 by Tracie Dowling

This week we have been very busy getting ready to celebrate the King and Queen’s Coronation.

before school the wonderers and Rangers joined in and made some crafts before school. They had a non school uniform day to celebrate, so Tracie painted flags on their hands and faces and made Coronation dress up for them to wear.

We then made lots off different crafts to decorate the room. The children loved colouring in the felt Royal jewels and family.

Phyllis knitted an amazing crown for everyone, the children all looked so cute wearing it.

The children asked if they could make their own crown, they used card, paint, pens and stickers to make bright shiny crowns just like the king and Queen will be wearing.

The babies didn’t miss out, they took part in activities involving mark making, practising their fine manipulative skills, messy and sensory play.

The younger children asked if they could have their face painted like the big kids. They were all so good standing still while Tracie painted the flags.

We had so much fun chatting away learning new words, while making the crafts. We learnt facts about the royal family, looked at pictures of castles and looked on the internet at the Crown Jewels.

We enjoyed a lovely tea party we invited Becky and her mindee’s to join us with the party. We wore our crowns, made cakes, had sausage rolls, sandwiches and corn snacks. George said he loved the cakes the best, grace, Elsie, Fifi and Jack loved wearing the crowns and taking part in the activities. Charlotte loved eating everything she could get her hands on and Ben made a lovely mess while enjoying a cup cake.

After the party we made pictures using foam stickers of the Royal family, corgis, London icons and Royal buildings. We ended the day singing songs and dancing to music which was Royal themed.

bug hunt, family, Garden Classroom, Honey Bees, Bees, Great British Bees, outdoor play, rangers, Seedlings, Uncategorized

Look Who’s Collecting Nectar In Our Garden

Posted on 3rd May 20238th May 2023 by Tracie Dowling

Did you know Honeybees fly about 55,000 miles at 12mph just to make one jar of honey! Today in our garden we found not 1 but 5 amazing nectar gatherers!

Some bees have very long tongues so they can reach into tubular-shaped flowers like our Foxgloves, honeysuckle, and snapdragons. The children are growing all three of these plants so we are hoping the bees take advantage and have some of our nectar.

We like to encourage the bees to come into our garden because they are part of the biodiversity on which we all depend on to live and underpin healthy ecosystems, helping all of nature to thrive. Honeybees, wild bees, and bumblebees pollinate our crops which helps them to grow.

A Few Bees From The 270 Found In Great Britain

The Honeybee is the best-known bee in Great Britain but there is actually over 270 species of bee recorded here!

George asked Tracie an amazing question today about the Bees ” Tracie where do the bees sleep?’ Tracie explained she didn’t know but we would find out. We decided to ask Google and she said “Female solitary bees sleep in their nests but male solitary bees sleep outside, they rest in places like flowers or long grass stalks. We also found out you can tell a bee is asleep because its antennae are still, its head, and its wings are tucked into its body.

Grace asked ‘ do Bees close their eyes at bedtime?’ another amazing question! Bees actually do close their eyes and relax like humans do. George said ‘Human?” We are called humans, George because we are living beings.

Elsie asked if bees cuddle? We looked it up on the internet and the answer was that they love to hold each other’s legs while they sleep! How cute is that!

George reminded us that we saw a bumblebee who looked poorly last year and we helped him feel better. I asked the children if they could remember how we made him better ‘ and they said ‘gave him water on a spoon’. I told them they were so clever to remember and that we also added sugar to the water and it dissolved and it gave the bee energy to make him feel better to fly home.

I then showed them the picture of my dad on the Tracietreasures web site, he was in his bee-keeping uniform and I explained how he collects the bee’s honey from his hives and puts it into jars.

We all had snacktime of honey sandwiches nom nom.

What an amazing activity we had today, started out as a walk around the garden and ended up with information collecting using Google, internet, and books all about our Bees, what amazing questions the children asked me.

bug hunt, childminding, Garden Classroom, Seedlings

Today’s Weeding The Garden Ended Up A Bug Hunt!!

Posted on 19th Apr 2023 by Tracie Dowling

George came in this morning skipping full of the joys of spring, telling us how sunny it was outside. He asked if we could all go out to play in the sunshine

We decided to get out buckets and trowels to do a little weeding in the front garden because as George put it “tis a mess!”

George was so eager he went full bull in a china shop and pulled out the first flower he found, shoving it in my face. “Tracie, Tracie is this a weed?” “No George thats not a weed thats my tulip!”

“ I will take it home for my mummy she loves red roses!”

Elsie found a wiggly worm and called us over to have a look. Elsie moved on and found a snail which she described as “sticky, yuk” so I had to pick it up.

We just kept finding bugs so decided to ditch the weeding (probably safer if we want our flowers to survive George!) and turn the activity into a bug hunt.

We ended up finding, an ants nest with loads of ants marching around, a lily Beatle, lots of wood louse, a ladybird and a carrot! A carrot!! Guess who found that!!!

We went over nearer the house and found a lovely red Crocosmia, a hidden pansy, a blue Felicia and a fly on a leaf. This time it wasn’t George who found it, ‘twas Elsie’

What a lovely day out in the garden, lets hope the sun is shining tomorrow.

Garden Classroom, number games, Seedlings

Making Our Own Number Blocks.

Posted on 1st Apr 2023 by Tracie Dowling

We had fun making number blocks today. We printed off 1-10 sets of leaves and a sunflower head which we stuck onto our big duplo bricks.

We first played a match the number game, the children all helped each other to place them on the corresponding number.

George was able to count up to and recognise beyond the number 10! How amazing! Now we need to print off and make leaf bricks from 11-20 so George can learn to recognise them in sequence too! Grace found numbers 1-4 and place them on top of the correct leaf, sh was so pleased with herself.

Elsie found the yellow sunflower and enjoyed building the leaves which made the flower grow bigger and bigger!

childminding, family, frog Spawn, frogs, Garden Classroom, hydroponics, outdoor play, rangers, Seedlings, The Theatre, wanderers

A Walk Around The Garden

Posted on 1st Apr 202321st Apr 2023 by Tracie Dowling

Today we walked around the garden to look at all the changes we made last year and to make notes on what we want to plan for this year.

The winding footpath we made last year is ideal for walking and running about avoiding the messy mud. The children love how they can run around and peep through the planting bug hunting, plant spotting and watching everything grow. They love the bug pile and saw some worms and ants.

We have sown all our bedding plants this year to save money, we also used peat free compost to help save our planet. The seeds have now grown into healthy young plants so we potted them on, ( put into bigger pots) and put them into the cold frame to wait for the last frost, we will then put them in our living wall.

This years project is to make the decking area into a nicer living ‘Outdoor Classroom’ We have chosen

Petunia, Lobelia and Fuchsia’s to have trailing, ground cover in the vertical wall garden. We will add the Herbs (growing in our greenhouse) for tasting and smelling into the wall as soon as they have matured.

We have Roses, Honeysuckle, Jasmine and Passiflora for climbing up the trelliss and giving off a floral fragrance. Our aim is to make the ‘Outdoor Classroom stimulate all our five senses. To make the decking more accessible for the babies we are going to add Astro turf so it’s safer for them to crawl and play on.

We were so excited to see our frogs while out and about, they were keeping an eye on their spawn, this will soon turn into tadpoles and frogs. Tracie taught us how to carefully remove some of the water weeds and she added some bunches of watercress to freshen up the pond to make the water less Murky so we can see the pond life without disturbing them.

Our Big Plans For This Year 2023:

We have decided in our living classroom we are going to:

Lay artificial grass to make the decking completely baby friendly.

Make a toy box storage area for outdoor equipment

Pot up the Herbs and make labels.

Make a water feature for relaxing sound and to have water play

In the Greenhouse we are going to grow:

Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Loofa , Chilli and start off our Cabbage, Cauliflower, and Broccoli

Sow winter flowering plants to give out Garden all year color and edibles.

In the front garden:

We want to encourage more wildlife in, so we are thinking about making a new pond, putting in more hedging, and adding some hidden bird feeders.

So we have BIG plans, so keep watching our blogs to see how we go….

Uncategorized

Seedling Garlic Growing

Posted on 24th Mar 202321st Apr 2023 by Tracie Dowling

In our ‘Oddbox’ our weekly wonky vegetable box we had three garlic bulbs. We decided we didn’t need all three so we cut the top off to see if it would grow.

Grace placed it on a saucer of water and this it what happened!

We are going to have an abundance of home grown garlic to last us all year!!

Uncategorized

Hydroponics Update

Posted on 16th Mar 202321st Apr 2023 by Tracie Dowling

Back in January the Wonderers and Rangers started a Hydroponic experiment to see how we could grow our fruit and vegetables without using soil.

We started with three main units, 2 small table top appliances one which had built in lights and a pump system and another, a still water system with lights built in. Tracie was then very lucky to have had a third brought for a present, a vertical pump system which needed grow lights added.

The built in pump systems work by pumping water constantly around the root system moving nutrients (added to the water) and providing air flow. We found these seeds germinated quickest out of the 3 systems used. We kept a constant eye on the water levels and nutrient PH.

We found once the plants had grown their second true leaves they started to look like they were wilting. The children came to the conclusion that the lights were scorching them so we raised the lights to see if there would be any improvement.

The root system was amazing, Alfie (one of our seedlings) described them as white wiggly worms. The problem was we they were filling up the units so we decided to trim them back a little to give them room to grow. We found this made the plants less stable and they toppled over.

Chloe and Mason researched using the ipad about hydroponics and found yet another system. it was much bigger and they thought it would provide the roots more space.

We had fun building the unit together, we had to buy even more lights to go around the systems which was a bit pricey. This is essential as they provide the artificial daylight to enhance photosynthesis that plants need to enable them with added nutrients to grow big and strong.

I asked the children if they had thought about ways we can store all the crops once grow. We discussed having to stagger growing, freezing and giving their parents some to take home.

Our plant are thriving better in the bigger system. However they are getting so big again they are starting to topple over. Tracie moved one tomato plant into its own ‘homemade’ system where we add tomato feed and we are waiting to see if it helps.

We will keep you up to dates later in the year to see how it all works.

childminding, Garden Classroom, Seedlings

Exciting Watching The Snow Falling

Posted on 13th Mar 202313th Mar 2023 by Tracie Dowling

The children were amazed watching the snow falling.

It settled very quickly and started to pile up on the outside door frame. George thought it looked cold, Elsie wanted to build a snowman and we think Elliott wanted to eat it because he kept licking the window!! Yucky!!