sensory play – Tracie's Treasures

Easter Fun Tray

Posted on 7th Mar 202426th Mar 2024 by Tracie Dowling

Over the next few weeks we will be celebrating Easter. We started the celebrations by having a tray activity.

We put together a tray of colourful items that we think of when talking about Easter time. We added a rainbow because the weather is rainy and sunny. We added a plant lifecycle so we could see how a plant grows from a seed to an adult plant.

You cant have an Easter tray without eggs, we added blue, purple, green, yellow and red ones.

Elliott made the hen a lovely nest, he also used the shredded paper to play hide and seek with the bumble bees.

Alba and Elliott played in the sand, digging for hidden eggs. They found other Easter shaped craft items such as pastel coloured shapes, flowers and stencils .

Alba said she enjoyed making mini Easter sand castles.

We are going to extend this activity by adding our farm animals, farm house and farmer. We will have sing and Rhyme time to include ‘10 big easter eggs’, ‘humpty Dumpty’ and ‘old McDonald’

childminding, christmas activities, communication, conversations, Garden Classroom, outdoor play, Uncategorized

Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?

Posted on 2nd Jan 202427th Feb 2024 by Tracie Dowling

Today when we all woke up we had a lovely surprise… snow! White fluffy snow.

Poppy was not very happy because she wanted to stay home and play in the snow! She had to walk to school as the bus was cancelled, but she enjoyed walking in the snow. When she got to school there was a big fun snowball fight.

Chloe was happy because her school was closed, she went to the park with her mum and brothers. Ben loved the Canada Geese, one went up to him and ate the bread from his hand. Jack and Chloe loved snow ball fighting, but didn’t like getting so cold.

After breakfast we all got our coats, scarves and gloves on and went for a walk in the back garden.

Martie made some amazing hand prints in the snow that had settled on a toy box.

Balancing, childminding, christmas activities, communication, conversations, language, Simple Instructions, Uncategorized, water play

Our Favourite Christmas Activities Of week 2

Posted on 16th Dec 2023 by Tracie Dowling

We started off the week making a ginger bread house and Christmas trees.

Unfortunately the house kept falling apart so the children decided to eat it instead!

We decided to make gingerbread men instead to decorate, it was far easier for the children. However the end result was the same… they ate them and took one home for someone special, nom nom

Everyone was in the festive mood when we had Christmas Jumper day.

Fun was had trying to learn how to balance penguins and polar bears on the floating icebergs. The children enjoyed the activity so much we played it four times in one day!

What fun we had on week 2, Christmas party week next week, Exciting!

camping, childminder Drop In, childminder Network, childminding, communication, fire pit, forest school, Garden Classroom, outdoor play, Seedlings, stronger Practice Hun Everton

Christmas Festivities Week 1

Posted on 13th Dec 2023 by Tracie Dowling

We kicked off the festivities with Poppy putting up the Christmas Tree. Next was the decision of Fairy, Angel or Star, Poppy decided it was the star as she wanted ‘Bling’ this year.

Molly was excited when she saw all the decorations, I took this fabulous picture and sent it to her mum.

Our first trip out was to our Stronger Practice Hub at Everton to join in with the Forest school. We made a fire and had marshmallows, smores and lots of activities outdoors. Even Father Christened made a visit!

We started our crafts by making a Christmas wreath. All the children made green hand prints, except for Elliott, he doesn’t like getting his hands messy. Elliott painted a green picture instead and we cut out shapes to add to the plate.

Next we glued the prints onto a paper plate and added glitter, sparkly paper and various other pretty shapes. Tracie then hung them up to dry. We displayed them on the window for everyone to see.

When Molly was in she asked me what my favourite decoration was, i said the light up Robin. Mollys favourite was the glittery peacock and George’s said his was the owl twit twoo.

The children made some very pretty Stockings. painted some lovely cutouts of Father Christmas and all his Reindeer’s, Jack gave Rudolf a big red nose.

childminding, communication, conversations, healthy body and mind, language, number games, outdoor play, Seedlings, Speach and Language , flowers, language, communication, speech, Uncategorized

Posted on 24th Nov 202313th Dec 2023 by Tracie Dowling

childminding, conversations, Farmer Teds Farm, forest school, Garden Classroom, Go Kart Racing, number games, outdoor play, pumpkins, rangers, Seedlings, Uncategorized, wildlife

Pumpkin Play

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

We had fun this week with the Pumpkin’s, heres a little gallery of our activities.

We went to Teds Farm Pumpkin Patch to choose some Big ones to carve out.

We all had a fun day out and can’t wait to go again next year.

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