Hope you’re having a lovely week. If you haven’t read one of our weekly posts before – welcome. You’ll find out what we’ve been doing over the last week-ish – life happens so sometimes it’s not every week! There are usually bits about our nature studies, books we are loving, seasonal snippets, cookery, play and arts and crafts. I’d love you to drop a comment and let me know what you’ve been up to with your little ones.
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Pancake Day
Floss has adored making pancakes this week for Shrove Tuesday and it’s been central to a lot of her play. Once we’d made pancakes together and flipped them all over the place she decided she wanted to make some mini ones for her mice. The mini bowl, spoon and whisk has had heavy play this week. We made gluten free/ dairy free pancakes and served them traditionally with sugar and lemon first – why do kids love lemon so much! We then had them with bacon, blueberries and maple syrup the next day. How did your pancakes come out?
Nature Explorers
This week in Exploring Nature with Children curriculum is Field Trip week and we’ve got a little field trip to the beach planned. I’ll tell you more about that in the next post. We’re from the Midlands UK, so I’m always SUPER excited to see the sea.
I’m busy getting things ready for Nesting Birds week next week. If you want to find out what resources and ideas I’m putting together check out my blog post here. There’s also a little idea in the post for easy bird watching that we did this week.
With our nature study for next week we’ll be pairing it with the traditional tale The Ugly Duckling. If we can fit in more stories and books we do! I think for Floss stories really help to bring topics alive for her. So much learning happens while she is immersed in a story.
Spring Ready
Starting to think and prepare for Spring has been a focus this week for us. I’m slowly working through the kitchen cupboards and giving everything a Spring clean – so satisfying. Next will be looking at the wardrobes and getting out some of our more Summery clothes. Someone recommended a book ‘The Checklist Book‘ to me that I’ve devoured this week. I’ve always loved ‘To Do Lists’, but lately they’ve lost their luster a little as I’ve been struggling to keep on top of them.
The Checklist Book gives a different approach to to do lists and one of the ideas I love is around a ‘Seasonal To Do List’. So, this week I’ve been busy thinking about all the things I must do in Spring, but more importantly the things we’d love to do this Spring. I haven’t quite finished compiling, but when I have, I’ll share it with you.
Hand crafts are a shared love for Floss and me and naturally we like to make things to celebrate Spring and add to our seasonal table in our home. Floss really treasures her fairies and we have a growing collection of Ambrosius fairies, however, she loves it when we craft together to make them. This is our daffodil fairy. We’re using the book Making Flower Children for some extra inspiration to make some more to add to our collection.
Bookworms
Talking of books, we received our Yes Bebe Book Club at the weekend and were thrilled with our two surprise books, One Fox and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Both books have been really enjoyed MANY times. If you would like to find out more about the books and activities to go with them, check out my blog post here. The ideas would work for lots of books with activities for children aged between 2 and 7. Floss’s favourite activity is using the Montessori moveable alphabet to match up letters to words and objects depicted in the books.
Learning Through Play
In our home we rotate our toys, if you’d like to find out more about how and why, I’ve written a blog post on toy rotation here. Floss is almost 3.5 years old now and her play is really changing. Her focus has become quite rigid at times as she now wishes to explore more deeply in her play. Themes for her play will often last throughout a day and into the next. It’s a real shift from the fleeting play of her earlier years. She is very much interested in self care and caring for others and role playing everyday activities from the home.
The Cubes
Top left – She loves playing with her Dinkum dolls. Sprout has new PJs and a hairbrush. I think it’s so important for little ones to have opportunities to ‘care’ for others. It can be a really good way to encourage children who are reluctant with some self care tasks to do it through role play, such as brushing teeth.
Top right – Birds are big in this house (every time I start to sort out resources for nature study we end up dipping in early as Floss gets very excited). So, we’ve got some bird fact books (199 Birds and a new release Birds) and ID cards from Fiddlesticks.Education. She’s asked to do some watercolour painting of her favourite bird, a blue tit, later this week.
Bottom left – Have you heard about Maileg mice? I hadn’t really understood the hype to be honest, until Floss asked to get some with some money she’d been given for Christmas. They really are beautifully made and surprisingly sturdy. I specifically popped out accessories that mirrored what we had been doing, making pancakes. It was Floss who actually gave me the idea after she laid out a table for them and asked we make mini pancakes for them.
Bottom right – The Grimms Pebbles are a wonderful open ended resource and I love putting out resources like this that get used in so many ways. Often they get matched with resources from our Tinker Tray. This week Floss has been using the Tinker Tray and pebbles to be make flowers. Tinker Tray is from Grapat along with the Grapat mandala pieces.
Have a lovely week – Love Lisa & Floss xx
