Posted in childminding, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, healthy body and mind, outdoor play, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Little Gardeners: Spring into Summer.

The children have been so busy working hard sowing seeds, potting on and planting their crops.

They have been growing a vast array of fruit, veg and salad crops and we are just beginning to reap the rewards.

Last year we sowed strawberry seeds, they took a while to germinate but after a while we were so glad to see little seedlings appearing through the compost. This year they have flowered and we are so excited to eat them. We have been thinking what to have them with. Chloe wants them just the way they come, Phyllis wants afternoon tea, Tracie wants Jam and Mason wants them on pancakes! What a choice we are going to have!

This week we have potted up our tomatoes ready to take home and plant in our own gardens, in pots on our patio’s. Alba came for a visit, she took one home for her new garden.

The greenhouse is flourishing at the moment we have Loofa (to make as Christmas presents later in the year, watch out for that blog!) Our Lemon tree which we have grown from a pip has grown to about 2 feet now! We are hoping for some flowers then fruit soon.

We have summer bedding plants and Pac Choi for our stir fry’s. On the right side of the Greenhouse we are growing our baby cucumbers, We can soon have cucumber sandwiches to go with our Strawberry afternoon tea!

Behind the greenhouse we have our front garden project plants growing. We have 3 different types of Lavender plants growing ready to make a fragrant hedge later in the year.

We had a disaster last year with our cabbages. The slugs, butterflies and caterpillars decided they were going to eat them before us! We are touch wood (as Tracie says) beating them this year by growing them in a huge copper pot (apparently slugs don’t like copper) with a mesh over the top, lets hope our efforts work!

In the big veg trough we have Parsnips, Carrots, leeks, swede and Beetroot growing ready for winter vegetables. Hopefully we will produce enough to keep us in Scouse and soups all winter.

We have to be creative where we grow our vegetables and fruit as we don’t have a-lot of space. Our projects help to make our environment work for us, so we are clever and pack in fruit and veg in between the ponds, flower beds, wildlife feeding stations and play space.

We have sprouts growing in between the giant poppies, sweet peas and peas growing up netting together and our mange tout growing on wigwams.

Our lettuce is growing in rows on our decking and we have herbs in the living wall with tomatoes growing up the trellis. The only place left to play is on the washing line, even there Ive been known to hang bird feeders and hanging baskets.

Our lovely garden is packed full of planting to stimulate our five senses, smell, taste, touch, seeing and of course eating.

Posted in bug hunt, childminding, frogs, Garden Classroom, Honey Bees, Bees, Great British Bees, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Bug Hunting

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!

We Found A Frog!

What a busy, fun bug hunt we had today!

Posted in Garden Classroom, number games, Seedlings

Making Our Own Number Blocks.

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!

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

A Walk Around The Garden

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.

Spring In The Garden

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….

Posted in childminding, Seedlings

Dinosaur World

Today George wanted the Dinosaur’s out to play with. I set up a tray with natural materials for them to build a small world scene.

George and Elsie worked together to build a big big tree house. They counted the wooden trunks as they built it taller and taller.

George said ‘look at this its nearly bigger than me!’ Elsie started counting backwards’5,4,3,2,1 timber’ as she pushed them all down.

Posted in childminding, family, Seedlings, Uncategorized

Happy 1st Birthday Elliott

Today we went to Amsleys the local play centre to celebrate Elliott’s First birthday.

The children loved the ball pool and slides the best. Think Debbie enjoyed it the most, it definitely sounded like it with the big ‘Weeee’ she screamed on the way down!

George was amazing on the climbing wall, he went straight to the top and loved jumping off scaring me!

Tellitubbies

Off all the toys and equipment the centre had and Elliott played with the TV we have back at ours.

Elsie grew in confidence going up and down the steps and made it to the top on her own. Well done Elsie and Happy Birthday Elliott xx

Posted in childminding, Garden Classroom, greenhouse, rangers, Seedlings, Uncategorized, wanderers

Spring Additions To Our Kitchen Garden

We’ll finally after wanting one for years we have a Green house! Whoop Whoop

However it was not easy to put together. Gemma came around to help, it took us three days of total frustration to get it together.

We had to start with the base, we soon found out we needed a wooden base for the metal one to sit on!

We tried hard to follow the instructions but they didn’t make sense! we finally got the sides up then found the window fixers wouldn’t fit!

We had to take everything apart and start again making sure the ridge was on the outside for the glass.

When we finally got it up (Chloe helped too!) we realised it wasn’t suitable for the area we had erected it, so had to take it down and then put it up AGAIN!

Finally its in place and is full of growing plants.

Posted in childminding, family, Seedlings, wanderers

Martie Starting School

Our Martie has grown up so much since starting with us as a baby. She is now starting school and we will be minding her baby sister which we are looking forward too. We will look forward to seeing Marty in the holidays and catching up with all her stories from school.

Here is a compilation of photos from her amazing time with us. Good luck Martie see you at Easter xx

Posted in childminding, family, Garden Classroom, Seedlings

What A Month For Our Seedlings!

This month the children have been working hard on their physical skills.

Izzy is now confidently walking the whole of the play rooms. She is growing in confidence even walking up the soft-play equipment.

Our youngest Seedling is not even 1 years old and can walk around the room with encouragement from adults and peers. Well done Alba!

Edie is well and truly walking, even running at times.

The three eldest Seedlings have been practicing their balancing skills. Balancing on the soft play equipment and balancing boards.

Posted in childminding, Garden Classroom, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Halloween Fun

Everyone had fun for Halloween this year, Emma and her family looked amazing. They were very scary and got up to lots of mischief.

Poppy chose not to be scary but join in by wearing her favourite Anime costume. Her jacket stands out on a dark night, which keeps her safe when out and about trick or treating.

Poppy

Alfie from the seedlings was such a cute bat. He even tried to sleep upside down on the soft play!

Pumpkin Carving

The Rangers all helped each other to carve the pumpkins. They were very careful while using the vegetable knives. I am so glad they carved them outside, the mess was phenomenal!

Hunt the spiders

The Rangers and Wanderers enjoyed the carving and apple bobbing the best. The Seedlings enjoyed the hunting for buried spiders, Tracie put a few treats in the sand for them to find for a surprise.

Apple Bobbing