A festival of Christmas activities!

We've rounded off a brilliant year with some lovely Christmassy activities. I've not got round to blogging much as we've been so busy, so here's a quick run down:

We've made christmassy cupcakes:

 Saltdough decorations:

 Mincepies:

 We've partied!

 We've played with snowy sensory trays:

 And peppermint christmas tree playdough:

 We've decorated the Christmas tree:

 And exlpored a Christmassy discovery box:

 Done Christmassy colouring in:

 Made snowmen:

And gingerbread Christmas trees:

 Explored the oaty, pepperminty Christmas sensory tray:

 Gone on a trip to Winter Wonderland:

 Made Christmas cards:

 Been to see the Coca Cola lorry:

 And finished off with Christmas dinner:

It's been so much fun - hope Father Christmas brings something lovely for all these good little boys and girls!

Sinking and floating

It was a lovely afternoon so we spent it out in the garden, our bulb planting lead to watering..

Which lead to filling buckets with water. Which lead to a sink or float experiment. The 3 year old I was looking after wanted to know why a toy frog was staying on top of the water so we talked about how and why some things float and some things sink and found lots of things around the garden to experiment with: 

A big pine cone:

A toy car:

And lots more. Lots of fun and lots of learning!

Discovery Boxes - Fabric

Every week I make up a different Discovery Box for the younger children I look after. So far we've had one filled with different shape, size and texture balls, another filled with blocks of different description. This week is fabric. The one year old I look after loves opening and closing lids so I always use a box with a lid and give him a 'spare' empty one so he can move the fabrics around, opening and closing lids to his heart's content!

As ever, when the older children came home from school they wanted to get stuck in too. So I dug out some larger fabrics which they laid out, explored thoroughly and made into costumes:

Oat-so much fun!

Today's messy play activity was oats! My 2 year old and the 1 year old I was looking after loved this - they scooped them with spoons and put them in cups and bowls, they chucked them all over the floor and ate a fair few as well! Definitely one to do again another day:

Jelly - but not on a plate!

More messy play today, and this time we used Jelly! It's perfect for messy play with babies who still like to put everything in their mouths. I buried some wooden animals in the jelly to encourage the children to get digging around in it. My 2 year old loved it and had a really good time spooning it into different containers and digging out the animals:

Of course, they couldn't resist having a little taste too!

Rice Krispie Kraziness

This week we welcomed a new starter to Hobbsy's House, a lovely 1 year old boy. I'm looking forward to finding lots of fun things to do with a younger toddler and found this fantastic blog by another childminder full of inspiration. I wanted an easy to set up sensory activity and found a post on Rice Krispies! I set it up outside with the toy kitchen so that my 2 year old could join in at her level:

Her favourite thing was jumping on them to hear them crunch!

Meanwhile the 1 year old enjoyed just running his hands through them and carried fistfuls around with him while he played in the garden!

What's cooking?

Cooking is a favourite activity of all the children I look after. But when real cooking isn't an option a few dry ingredients and a toy cooker is just as much fun! Pouring, mixing, plating up...and with no washing up after.

Pasg Hapus/Happy Easter!

It's been a busy Easter Holidays so far at Hobbsy's House, we've had an Easter Egg Hunt, made some chocolate crispy nests with chocolate eggs, painted some eggs using the very cool salad spinner technique posted on my favourite blog The Imagination Tree ; and I put together a Spring/Easter 'Sensory Box' with some coloured rice. As you can see by the blurred hands in the photo this was very successful as children aged between 2 and 12 got stuck in!