Helping or encouraging your child to learn her colours, should be both fun and light hearted. My eldest son, learnt his colours from playing with his toy cars, he would ask me, “What colour is this one, mummy?” He learnt very quickly and I remember when we were in the library and he referred to…
I came across this book on social media and was attracted by it straight away because it’s just the thing that my youngest son loved to do when he was growing up ( he is the youngest of 4 siblings) and always wanted to be ‘a big boy’ like his brothers and as they had…
I was sent a pack of 10 double sided, wipe clean flashcards for review. The thing that makes these flashcards better than the average ones are that not only do they help children to learn the names of colours and shapes. There is also the option of tracing the shape and it’s name on the…
The question of how to help a child with number recognition came up recently on social media. These are my ideas. In my experience, most children start recognizing numbers by their age. Many youngsters are given birthday cards with their age on ( usually the number is large and brightly coloured) Some children walk around…
This post is prompted by a question that a registered child minder asked on a Facebook group. When I was a registered child minder I looked after a little boy who was quite slow in learning at 4 years old he had no idea of colour recognition, among other things more on colour recognition here…
When my children were young and when I was working as a registered child minder, I was always looking for simple, cheap activity ideas that the children could do. Now that the corona virus is forcing some people to self isolate having things to entertain children is even more important:- One of the most popular…
Because child minders have fewer children in their care than larger settings, such as nurseries and pre-schools, they should have more time to be able to tailor activities to suit individual children. When I was a registered child minder I felt that I knew my children very well. As I was in receipt of the…
When I was working as a resisted child minder, like most other child minders I looked after a variety of children of different ages, stages of development and some with special needs (often all at once). My favourite activities which can be enjoyed by everyone, with maybe a few adjustments to suit special needs are:-…
Walker books sent this beautiful hardback children’s picture book. Little (and some not so little boys) everywhere will love this book. Inside the front cover is a diagram of the little digger pointing out the different parts. Little digger feels left out when a bigger digger arrives on the building site, until big digger gets…
As a former early years practitioner I know that children learn a great deal through play, I don’t really agree with the idea of having a curriculum for children under the age of 3; I don’t think it is necessary. When I was a child minder all my under 5’s learnt to tell the time…
ichild have a wide selection of children’s activities that can be downloaded. Here are just a sample of the ones with a spring/summer theme:- Missing numbers This sheet has 16 rabbit outlines – some are numbered and a few have numbers missing meaning that children could be encouraged to count out loud and say the…
Regular readers will know that I have worked with ichild for a number of years. This is a selection of their winter activities and crafts which will be suitable for a variety of different aged children: Winter olympic wordsearch: This is great for alder children, there are 12 winter Olympic themed words to find. The…
The first thing that struck me when I received this book was the brightly coloured front cover. Then to my delight, I discovered that the text is written in rhyme, my absolute favourite for children’s literature , as it not only makes the story more fun, but any early readers can often predict the next…
I came across this company on Facebook and they agreed to send some magazines for a review: I received 3 magazines; as follows: Favourites (:issue 414) This is jam packed with fun learning opportunities; dinosaur stickers and story. a simple recipe ( for children to create with an adult’s help. a word search and colouring…
Once again, I am sharing some of the activities that ichild are offering: BUNNY PAPER CHAIN: This is simply a case of concatenating some paper and cutting out the bunny shape; children can then colour or use different mediums to decorate their bunnies before hanging them up as bunting. BUNNYCOLOUR-BY-NUMBERS: Is exactly what it says;…
I came across this company on social media:- All of the stones are hand painted by this growing company. I was sent 2 sets of stones for the review: Both sets arrived in a cute drawstring jute bag. Emotions: These are a set of 6 stones, which would be great for early years practitioners and…
The simplest and most effective way to teach children how to count is to count everything aloud with them. Start from a young age by counting their fingers and toes with rhymes such as this little piggy and 1,2 ,3 ,4 .5 once I caught a fish alive to make it fun. I always used…
This is a small selection of activities that ichild offer:- EASTER COLOUR AND COUNT: This is exactly what it says; an Easter picture to colour and related images to discover and count, great for helping children with learning about counting and numbers. Number recognition here. EASTER CROSSWORD: 10 clues with the answers at the bottom…
This was a topic being discussed on a daytime television programme this week. Personally, I think that too much tech can have a negative effect on children. My eldest son loved his play station and would become moody when told to turn it off. A friend has told me that her son would trash his…
Once again ichild have come up with some wonderful activities for children; this is just a selection of some of the ones for autumn:- ADD THE AUTUMN LEAVES is quite a straightforward activity suitable for children who are learning to count, it would also help with learning number recognition (I have written an earlier post…
This paperback is written by Katy Segrove and illustrated by K aterina Vykhodtseva, it basically tells the tale of animal friends who want to put up a Christmas tree together, at first they can’t agree on what to have but it has a moral that if they stay positive and work together they will find…
Boolino books sent a set of 4 Toddlyworld books for a review, these brightly coloured board books are suitable for ages 2-5 years and come with an accompanying audio compact disc. These books feature Toddly and his teddy bear, Toddlybear, the books I received are titled Summer, Spring, Numbers and Stars and each tell a…