It’s now October and the horse chestnut trees have started to drop the conkers for us to collect and enjoy. ‘Conker picking’ has always been a sort of annual event for us. We’ve taken J to the same three trees ever since he was old enough to walk. This year there was a huge abundance…
Category: Preschool
Big Fun in a Little City: Our role play adventures (review).
This week we had the pleasure of popping to Little City – West Suffolk (there are other Little City’s available) for a playdate with a friend and her little girl. We decided to meet up at this play group for under 5’s as it was something different to where we usually go. Little City is…
Exploring Tumble Tots: A Structured Physical Play Group (inc. Autism advice)
Tumble Tots is a physical development programme for children in the early years (0-5 years). It’s basically a preschool child friendly gymnastics session where children learn to use equipment, do music and movements and develop skills such as hand-eye coordination, arm strength and gross motor control. It’s an important area of development at physical skills…
Activities to Play with Gelli Baff and Gelli Slime (which don’t involve using the bath).
AD| Gelli Baff and Gelli Slime gifted for review. I am a huge fan of hands on sensory play. It can help children to build tolerance to different textures, brings in lots of new language and encourages children to extend their play skills. My son, J (aged 4) is not a fan of messy and…
Family Day Out to Kentwell Hall: Tudor Reenactment Fun
We love going on family adventures, especially ones we can learn new things. Today is May Day and to celebrate we went to Kentwell Hall, Long Melford for their re-enactment weekend. It’s a day where they show us life in Tudor times. It was a great opportunity to talk about the differences between time periods,…
Encouraging play skills through book themed activities
We are definitely a book family in this household. Between myself, J and my husband our house has a lot of books in every room. J has a ‘book nook’ upstairs and a book shelf downstairs, as well as books in his bag and the car! He reads everything from rhyming books to classic kids…
A Visit to the Moon…exploring space with under 5’s.
J has a fascination with space thanks to his love of Star Wars. It started as just an interest in the Star Wars planets but it then began to bring in our own universe too. He started to want to know about Earth, the moon, our planets etc. We’ve been spending time exploring our world…
Halloween Activities for Children Under 5
Well it’s October already. The trees are changing colours, the heating is on and the shops are full of scary masks and fake blood. This must mean that Halloween is around the corner. Gone are the days when Halloween was just one evening where you dressed in a sheet or bin bag and knocked on…
Under 5’s Summer Reading: what books did we read in week one?
This summer we are making the most of our local library. We love books in our house but it costs a small fortune to keep on top of our list of ‘books we must read’. Going to the library means we all get amazing books to read without the price tag. Obviously we still buy…
6 Exciting Number Games: A Parents Guide to Early Number Play.
Maths was my least favourite topic in school. I’m pretty sure my GCSE maths teacher had to sell a kidney to bribe the exam board into passing me (hopefully I’m just joking). However, J seems to be the opposite. He has a growing fascination with numbers and a natural ability to learn the concepts of…
STEM and what it means for early years…
Every now and then a new ‘it word’ comes out. Sometimes it’s just renaming something that’s been around for years and sometimes it’s something new and exciting to the sector. STEM is not a new concept. However, it is an area that is becoming spoken about a lot more, especially with younger children. What is…
Encouraging Mark-Making: a parents guide…
Writing and drawing is an area where children are often put under a lot of pressure. They have to hold a pen a certain way, write in a certain formation, remember finger spaces, grammar, spelling. Everything has to have a meaning. Even in the English Early Years framework there is a large emphasis on writing…
Mummy Est.2014 