Hi there, how has your week been? We’ve had lots of fun celebrating Chinese New Year here in my childminding service – did you have a go at making or doing anything?

This week it’s going to be Pancake Day on Tuesday and Valentine’s Day on Thursday so there’s lots of fun to be had!

I spotted this pancake idea on womansfreebies.com which I think the children will love and we’ll have great fun making together:

(photo from womansfreebies.com)

To celebrate Valentine’s Day and to spread some love we shall be making heart -shaped stampers out of toilet roll tubes.

If you fancy a go you will need:

• Toilet roll tube
• Red paint (or any other colour that you might want to use!)
• A shallow tray
• Paper to print onto
• An apron for your little one

We haven’t only been hopping about like little bunnies to celebrate and talk about Easter. We have also been making Easter eggs…..

Inspired by the sunny weather that we had last week, we made some very lovely egg sun catchers. A simple activity that the children all managed to achieve with only a little intervention.

To make your own you will need:

• Assorted squares of tissue paper
• PVA glue
• A piece of plastic film (I used some sheets of acetate that I had lying about the house but you could always cut some out from the plastic trays that fruit come in or something similar)
• Some black paper
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Ribbon

Here’s what to do:

WARNING: This activity can get messy!!!

• Give your little one the sheet of plastic film and the glue and let them cover the plastic with glue.. told you it was messy!
• Hand over the squares of tissue paper and let them stick them on to the sheet wherever they like (you may want to clean their hands a little bit from handling all that glue as the paper sticks to their hands and they can get frustrated trying to pull it off!)
• Now distract your little one whilst the glue dries. I put an extra layer of glue over the top of their pattern to make sure that everything was stuck down for them but this might not be necessary
• Cut an egg shape out of the black paper and then cut the inside of the egg out to leave you with an egg shape outline with an egg shaped hole in the middle
• Get your little one to position the egg shape on top of the pattern where they think that it looks best and stick it down
• Cut around the outside of the egg
• Punch a hole at the top of the egg and thread the ribbon through
• Display your egg in a window where the sunlight can catch it

HAPPY EASTER TO YOU ALL WITH LOVE FROM

VICTORIA DALE CHILDMINDING