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

He really enjoyed playing with the toy vehicles so I started by getting him to choose a car and I told him the colour and asked him to find another with a matching colour.

We then moved on to driving the vehicles through paint; to make and talk about the different tyre tracks and the colours of the paint,

On a sunny day we sat outside on a wall and counted the different colours of the vehicles that drove past us. I had given him a clipboard with a chart for him to tally up the findings. This introduced him to simple mark making.

While out for a walk he asked about a road sign where some road works were taking place: So the next step was to let him use the camera on my phone ( under supervision) to take photos of different road signs. When we got home I helped him to print off the photos on my laptop this was his first introduction into Information technology,

One of his photos was of a road crossing sign so that took us to talking about road safety more here

Another child told me with great excitement that he had been to the cinema to see the Disney film Madagascar.

We looked for information about the animals in the film on the internet and in books, which included a visit to the library.

We discussed where the animals lived, for example the lemurs live mainly in the trees and what the different animals ate and how they got their food.

Finally I encouraged him to paint and draw the animals and we talked about the different colours he was using and why some animals are certain colours, for example, to give them camouflage as protection from other animals.

As registered child minders care for less children than larger settings they can really get to know those children. Which, I think, moving children on to the next steps is easier.

As always questions and comments are welcome,

Until next time.

Karen

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