Hello!

Apologies for not many blog entries recently. Life here at Victoria Dale Childminding has been pretty hectic as I have been completing my paperwork for the Care Inspectorate in preparation for an upcoming inspection. Whilst a lengthy exercise, it has been a great opportunity to reflect on my service and how I can improve upon what I do.

I have been thinking about my blog and how it could help parents and I have decided to introduce two new features………………………..

FUN DAY MONDAY

&

WHAT’S ON WEDNESDAY

I plan to share an activity idea with you every Monday and to inform you of local events and activities every Wednesday. I do hope that this helps encourage you to spend more quality time with your little ones and create happy memories for all the family.

Any feedback on either feature would be gratefully received at: hello@victoriadalechildminding.co.uk

Now…… I’m off to have a think about what fun we can share on Monday!

Have a great weekend,

Vicki

Saturday 23rd June 2012 – Love a Bug! 

Find out about some of the amazing insects you have in your local Country Park as part of National Insect Week. Have a look for some beasties and then make your own to take home at this fun family event.

Meet at Patterton car park, near Patterton Train Station.

For more details go to: www.damstodarnley.org

Saturday 30th June 2012 – Farm Craft Day at Tollcross Children’s Farm

Have you ever wondered how we get wool from sheep? Come along to the Children’s Farm and see a demonstration of sheep shearing as well as various country craft demonstrations, face painting and balloon sculpture for the children.

For more information go to: www.glasgow.gov.uk

Have fun if you go to any of these events.

The Olympic Torch Relay is coming to Glasgow on Friday 8th June and here at my childminding service we are getting ourselves ready to join in!

We have been making our very own torches and singing Olympic themed songs to get in the Olympic mood!

If you want to make a torch of your own then you will need:

• A kitchen roll tube
• Kitchen foil
• Sticky tape
• Red, orange and yellow paper
• Scissors
• Glitter
• Glue
• Card

and here is what to do:

• Firstly make your flame by cutting the paper into flame shapes that get smaller each time. I made yellow the biggest and red the smallest. Stick the flames together.
• Cover the smallest flame in glue and then in glitter. We used red glitter as it was the red flame.
• Now cover the next flame in glue and then in glitter too.
• We left the largest flame but you could always cover that one in glitter too!

• Now make your holder by taking the kitchen roll tube and rolling it in the foil. We then tucked the ends in and I put a length of sticky tape down the long edge to keep it from being torn by little fingers!

• There was much excitement when the shiny tubes were made and we pretended that they were instruments… “toot, toot”.
• To finish up we attached the flame to the torch by  putting a bit of card between the tube and the flame and sticking it into place on both pieces.

Our torches were now ready to wave about and run around with and we shall be taking them with us when we go to see the torch relay on Friday 8th June at Giffnock. For more details go to the East Renfrewshire Council website.

One of the songs that we have been learning is called “The Torch is on its Way” and was especially commisioned for Bookbugs for their Bookbug week which takes place from the 8th June to the 14th. To listen to the song go to the Bookbug website. We have had this on repeat all afternoon as the children really liked the “Doo Dah” lyric!!!

Are you doing anything for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee this weekend? We have had great fun here at my childminding service this week as we have been celebrating together. We had a special Jubilee tea party where the children and I got to eat the yummy cupcakes with red, white and blue sprinkles that we baked and we played some royal inspired party games whilst wearing our very own homemade crowns…. we had a wonderful few days!

If you fancy celebrating with your little one too you might like to have a go at making one of our crowns:

I found a great template on a website called first palette and used it to cut out a foam sheet into a crown shape. I then covered it in pva glue and let the children go mad with my collection of foam shapes, sequins and glitter… what fun they had (this activity should be supervised as some of the crown “jewels” present a choking hazard). The long strips were then attached to the crown using double-sided tape and I attached the strips to each other according to the size of the children’s heads (this will make sense if you see the template!)… we had great fun trying them on and checking out our appearances in the mirror.

To continue the Jubilee theme we also played some games at our tea party including, “Pin the Crown on the Queen”. For this I used the queen colouring page available on Activity Village and a picture of a crown and stuck them on our blackboard. The children had to try and get the crown on top of the queen’s head which they thought was great fun (I used blu-tac (other brands available!) to stick the crown on as it’s safer than a pin!).