family – Tracie's Treasures

childminding, christmas activities, communication, conversations, family, Uncategorized, wanderers, wildlife

Christmas Party Week

Posted on 22nd Dec 2023 by Tracie Dowling

We have had such a fun few weeks getting ready for Christmas. The house has been well and truly glitter bombed!

Holly is looking forward to her first Christmas. She has grown so much this year and been such a good girl, Father Christmas will definitely be bringing her something nice.

Ben and Jack absolutely loved these star shaped doughnuts, who doesn’t love Christian treats!

We have made so many different crafts over the last few weeks for our parents and grandparents. We loved making our Snowmen, let’s hope it really snows so we can make a real one.

Below are some photos Tracie has taken over the last few weeks.

We looked at some old photos of Chloe, Poppy and Tracie. We could see how big they have grown! can you see who is who?

These are a few Photos sent to Tracie over the festive holidays. George looks super lucky standing with all his Presents, Father Christmas has left him! Tracie had a lovely meal out with her family and has enjoyed the festive time off to re charge her batteries for the New year’s activities.

Ben and his mum look super excited to open their presents.

Look at our Debbie, she scrubs up well. I bet Father Christmas leaves her something lovely for Christmas.

Elsie and Evie are very happy with their lovely gifts. I particularly love her Spider Girl outfit! Wonder if she can climb up the walls? Let’s hope she wears a bungie rope for safety.

We wish everyone an amazing Christening and a Happy Healthy New Year.

childminding, family, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, hydroponics, outdoor play, rangers, Seedlings, Uncategorized, wanderers

Our Gardening Gallery 2023

Posted on 23rd Oct 202323rd Oct 2023 by Tracie Dowling

childminding, communication, conversations, family, Garden Classroom, healthy body and mind, number games, outdoor play, rangers, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, Uncategorized, wanderers, wildlife

October Fun Photos At Tracie’s Treasures

Posted on 23rd Oct 202323rd Oct 2023 by Tracie Dowling

camping, childminding, communication, conversations, family, Farmer Teds Farm, forest school, Garden Classroom, Go Kart Racing, language, number games, outdoor play, pumpkins, rangers, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, speech, Uncategorized, wanderers, wildlife

October’s Favourite Photos

Posted on 23rd Oct 202313th Dec 2023 by Tracie Dowling

childminding, communication, conversations, family, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, outdoor play, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, speech, Uncategorized, wildlife

Fun in the Garden

Posted on 24th Jul 202325th Jul 2023 by Tracie Dowling

We have so much fun learning and playing in our garden at Tracie’s Treasures. I want to share some of my favourite films from the last couple of months.

In this film Jack is looking in our small barrel pond he is investigating what lives in there. He finds YUK

Jack Exploring In The Half Barrel Pond

George and the girls walk around the garden to check for bugs, George sings ‘Barbie Girl’ all the way around.

George Singing Barbie Girl

Mr Black Bird Having A Bath

This funny clip George is singing again as usual. This time he is singing to a Snail about being gorgeous.

George Singing ‘Your Beautiful’ To A Snail

My favourite time of day, looking in the greenhouses to see whats growing.

Elsie, Grace and Georgia Looking In The Greenhouse

Hope you enjoyed the films, the children here are amazing.

childminding, communication, conversations, family, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, healthy body and mind, language, number games, outdoor play, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, speech, Uncategorized, wildlife

Open Ended Question Time In The Garden

Posted on 6th Jul 2023 by Tracie Dowling

Today we have been focusing on communication, what better place to use questioning then our garden!

Walking along the path Elsie noticed some Strawberries which we had grown in one of our pots.

I asked the children “what do you think they will taste like? Else’s answer was “delicious, can I have one?” As I gave her the strawberry “ I asked “ what does it feel like?” Jack said “ yum yum” and took it out of my hand and popped it in his mouth. Else’s response was “squidgy “.

“Jack is the strawberry blue?” Jack shook his head to say no Elsie shouted from over her shoulder to me “it’s red silly”

I asked the children if they could find a flower that was red too. Elsie went one way and Jack the other.

Else’s found hers first, I asked her if she knew what it was called and she said “ it’s a Poppies, we sow the seeds yesterday! I explained “we sowed them in Springtime and it takes a long time for them to flower” I asked her if she could remember the parts of a flower she said “Petals and leaves”

When Jack found a leaf with holes in he stopped and looked at it for some time then turned to me and said “o no, o no“ I said “looks like a bug has had his dinner Jack. What type of bug could it be? Elsie thinks it’s a spider, Jack a ladybird and Tracie thinks a bee, we will have to keep watching to see if we can find the culprit. Jack then pointed at a very tall sunflower, “b, b” and signed the words ‘big Flower’ I showed Jack that the Sunflower was taller than me!

We went for a wonder, I asked the children “ how many different colours of flowers can we find in our garden? Jack found one first “blue, blue” well done Jack “ you found a blue flower” can you say flower? “Blue blue” that’s such a fantastic flower Jack can you smell it? Jack put his nose right into the flower and the pollen went on the the tip of his nose. He started wiping it saying “yuck yuck”

Else’s found yellow, orange, blue, purple, brown, pink and green flowers. “Wow Elsie well done finding all the colours of the rainbow”

I picked out a beautiful flower and asked Elsie “ how many petals does the flower have?

Elsie counted to 11 in sequence then kept missing out some numbers then said “to many!” I explained I would have trouble counting them too as there where so many. I asked Elsie what colours she could see in the flower, she said “ yellow, purple and white” I asked her what do you think the middle colour will be when it’s fully open? Elsie thinks it’s going to be Green, we will have to look again tomorrow and see.

What a lovely garden activity we had lots of new words, descriptive words, colours, conversations and fun.

bug hunt, childminding, family, frog Spawn, frogs, Garden Classroom, Honey Bees, Bees, Great British Bees, outdoor play, Seedlings, wanderers, wildlife

What Did We Find This Week In The Garden?

Posted on 25th Jun 20235th Jul 2023 by Tracie Dowling

George went first to find a treasure in the garden today. He ran around a few times then finally stopped at this amazing flower! He said “its a snowball!” I explained that its an Onion flower. He said “yuk I don’t like onions” then ran off to play.

Elsie chose this amazing Peony, unfortunately it had a baby spider inside one of the petals so off went Elsie in a tizzy.

Jack found this amazing Poppy he smelt it and said ‘Wow!” He loved the Ladybird crawling up the stalk and ran inside for a magnifying glass. He came back and studied the ladybird. He asked me to help him pick up the ladybird and put it in a Jar. We gave the ladybird some leaves and sticks and made him a lovely home.

Jack then went off magnifying glass in hand to find some more ladybirds to put in the jar so they could be freinds.

Jack was still on a bug hunt so Elsie decided to join in. Both of the children looked for frogs they were disappointed not to see any but overjoyed with the tadpoles.

Chloe chose this white Rose as her favourite flower of the week. Chloe also loved the pink climbing Hydrangea, it was behind the rose covering the back wall.

Tracie got excited about her water Canna which is starting to flower for the first time. The sweet-peas are coming on amazingly and have an amazing sent.

bug hunt, childminding, family, frogs, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, Honey Bees, Bees, Great British Bees, outdoor play, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers, yoga

Half Term Fun

Posted on 1st Jun 20231st Jun 2023 by Tracie Dowling

It was lovely having Emma come and help Tracie care for us, we miss her so much during term time. It was also lovely to catch up with leo and Martie who came and spent the day with us, they have grown up so much!

The weather has been so kind for us, We have spent lots of time in the garden playing, planting, hiding and relaxing.

Our Jack took advantage of the lovely summer day to play out in the front garden, he loved this hot poker flower, he pretended it was a microphone and kept us all entertained with funny rap songs.

The long flowers were an amazing yellow colour which went with his t-shirt.

Jack practiced his ball skills, we tried to have a game but the table was to small. Next time we go to the park we will take our rackets and balls as they have a tennis table there!

Jack Showing off his Ball Skills

Lottie had a lovely time playing at Sector8 in the bouncy little ones play area. The big kids Georgia, Leo, Jack and Chloe played for a whopping 2 hours in the ‘big kids’ area.

We went for numerous walks around Stanly park. We took picnics, balls and got to play in the playground as it was very quiet.

Georgia loved playing with the Ello bricks and shapes. She made a lovely flower garden. She also made lots of crafts, this one was a pre printed princess dress, hair, shoes and gloves. Georgia then had to draw the princess’s face and join the arms and legs. It was so good she wanted to display it on the wall and make another one to take home. Georgia was so clever writing her full name on the top of the picture all by herself.

While walking around the park we kept an eye out for ‘Liverpool Kindness Rocks’ we were just about to give up when Tracie found one! She screamed and had to jump high to reach it.

We finished the week off starting our ‘30 Days Wild’ campaign by putting up bee and insects houses .we made sure the wild birds have enough clean water and seeds.

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.

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.