frogs – Tracie's Treasures

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, frogs, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, healthy body and mind, Honey Bees, Bees, Great British Bees, outdoor play, rangers, Seedlings, Uncategorized, wanderers, wildlife

Let’s Go 30 days Wild With Wildlife Trusts

Posted on 10th Jun 202316th Jun 2023 by Tracie Dowling

The first 10 Days….

Can we do one wild thing everyday for the month of June! A whole 30 days? We are involving Our Childminding Family to join us in the challenge! Why don’t you join us too? Have a go be Wild for June with us and the Wild Life Trust.

Day one: Chloe Camping and making a wild 3D picture with sticks and stones.

Day 2: While out on a walk Chloe found and rescued a dragon fly

Helping A Dragon Fly

Day 3: Tracie, Chelsea, Chloe and Ruby went for an amazing walk in Snowdonia and came across a Waterfall and went Swimming.

Day 4: Elsie And Jack was looking for wildlife outside of the front window.

They saw flowers, Butterfly’s, Poppies and Incy Wincy Spider.

Going up into the tree’s

Day 5: Chloe went Tree Hopping at Zip World, she was high up in the trees and saw Birds, Rabbits, Bees, Dragon Flys and squirrels

Day 6: We found A Wasps Nest!

The nest consists of around 8,000-10,000 hexagonal (six sided) cells arranged in 8-10 tiers of about 20cm in diameter. The building material is paper-like and made of “chewed” rotting wood mixed with the wasp’s saliva. Construction is begun by a queen wasp but completed by workers (sterile females)

Day 7: watching the swifts going in and out of the barn and listening to their song was amazing.

Day 8: Identifying wild plants around our garden and looking in the barrel pool.

Day 9: Elsie planted some wildflowers in her plant pot at home. She sent me a picture to add to our blog.

Day 10: we put some crushed up crisps on the bench at the park. We sat still for a while and a Robbin and Black Bird came to have a feed.

Investigating In The Barrel

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, childminding, frogs, Garden Classroom, Honey Bees, Bees, Great British Bees, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Bug Hunting

Posted on 28th May 202328th May 2023 by Tracie Dowling

Today the little seedlings decided they wanted to be explorers and look for bugs.

Jacks first area of interest was the barrel pool which has a solar powered floating fountain. he quickly realised if he moved it into the shade it stopped working. he liked slapping the to of the water and splashing himself.

Elsie soon caught up with Jack and wanted to have a go but she couldn’t quite fit, she started pushing Jack out of the way. Jack edged her away, I explained to Elsie if she moved back a little Jack would be able to turn around and move to give her some space to have a turn. It was a bit tricky because by then Ruby had decided to join the children which caused a traffic Jam.

While we were looking for bugs a Ladybird flew onto Jack. He froze and looked down at it. I carefully moved the ladybird off Jack so we could all have a better look. We counted the Ladybirds spots to see how old it was. we counted 8 spots George said “its like a spider with eight legs!’

Next we found a nest of tiny baby spiders, Elsie turned and fled, shes not a fan of spiders! George and Jack where fascinated watching them scuttling about the nest until Jack decided to poked the nest and made all the spiders run in different directions, this made Jack and George feel itchy like they were crawling up their body. Yuk!!

Next on the hunt we found a buzzy bumblebee going from one yellow poppy to another. Tracie explained he was collecting pollen from the poppies. Grace said ‘ to make honeycomb’ Tracie explained that bees make Honey which can be made into honeycomb. (Good activity idea! To extend learning) George said he loves honey and asked if we will have Honey sandwiches for snack time. Nom nom

Elsie decided to go back and look in the barrel again while the others went to the pond. We were so lucky because as we got there (very quietly) a frog was having a swim. Tracie very carefully got her net and caught him so we could have a closer look!

What a busy, fun bug hunt we had today!

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.