As part of my role as a childminder I have to follow the early years foundation stage and one element of this is using technology with the children to help them gain a wider understanding of the world that they live in and to provide learning opportunities that might be slightly different from the norm….
Category: early years
Mini Beast Blocks – Review
As anyone will see who follows my Instagram page @mamasden I love to use wooden toys in my childminding setting. I follow a curious approach with my children. I encourage them to get hands on with the toys, manipulating them, combining them in different ways and being inventive with games. Part of my approach is…
Top 10 Play Ideas – Holiday Addition
The summer holidays are here and many families will be jetting off or road tripping to their holiday destinations .. ever mindful of their little darlings and ways of keeping them entertained when the beach, holiday clubs or pool aren’t quite enough. I’ve jetted off to Turkey. I’m lucky to have access to our families…
Curious Play Outdoors – Winter
As a Childminder who is highly influenced by the Curiosity approach I like to spend lots of quality, educational yet largely child led time outdoors. I am lucky that I have a large garden and lots of green open spaces on my door step so I can give the children lots of free play opportunities…
A-Z of the Curiosity Approach
I recently attended a seminar and evening with The Curiosity approach and left with the realisation that this is pretty much the way that I run my childcare setting and am striving to create a calm, nurturing environment for the children in my care. As a childminder it is hard to balance work and home…
An Invitation to Play
|• Let their imagination soar •| ______________________________________ Why do we always want what others have? We spend endless hours scrolling through Instagram and Pinterest and daydream about what we could achieve if we… only had more money, only had one child, only had a bigger house…. in truth much of what we see is set…
My weight loss journey
I’m sat on a sunbed in Turkey, i’ve just celebrated my 34th birthday and i’m in a bikini… not bad for a married, self employed mum of 3, hey? The Turning Point Well something needed to change, i was out celebrating my brothers birthday in Feb 2017, we had a curry, i ate starter, main,…
Play activity ideas for under 1’s
It can be very overwhelming being a mum at the best of times. Add social media into the mix and you may be left feeling that prehaps you ‘should’ be doing extravagant activities with your baby which seem to be the norm on your feed. Try to give yourself a break, you are doing the…
Evolution: How basic beginnings evolve to brilliant learning zones.
|• E v o l u t i o n •| ______________________________________ Funny isn’t it how things evolve over time…. much like my setting has evolved my ways of sharing my ideas have also expanded and in January I decided to include my early years ideas onto my instagram feed Mama’s den. I tentatively started…
Mama's Den 