Monday 29 June 2015 - perfect weather for the mini rangers a bit cloudy, but warm.

Here Millie is discovering the onions that have been growing.

Lilly is exploring the texture of the Beetroot leaves.

Exciting story time with the Gruffalo in honor of Lyme Park's Gruffalo week.  The children who knew the story were very keen to join in and we had some children who knew the story well enough to help.  All the children helped by making the noises and actions.

 

Our Lovely Mini Rangers Millie and Gabrielle.

Gabrielle is using her story stick to catch a leaf.

Thank you Lin for helping with the pancake making and well done Hudson for being an angel while mummy was busy.

Industrious making and stirring in our woodchip area.

Big Thanks to everyone who made it down today, it was a lovely session.

Mel

Monday 29 June 2015

Mini Rangers is back after Raft Race Sunday!  Don't know if your planning on popping down, but the event is run and organised by the boat club.  Remember your risk assessment and take care to look out for rubbish that may not be friendly to you or your child.

Our ideas this week are centred around building sentences and learning and using new words.  To do this we have a very simple activity using a piece of string.

This week Mini Rangers we are focussing on a fishing game!  No we aren't going near the water, we are however using a piece of string.  We will tie a small twig on the bottom and then we are going to go on a treasure hunt through the undergrowth.  You will notice the big leaves the tiny flowers of different colours.

For children just being introduced to words it is enough to describe the colours, textures and feels of the objects that they find.  For older children I will bring some spotting books and we can start to identify the leaves and flowers that we find.

We are encouraging Attention and Listening through the circle time where we will be reading the Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson.   I will also briefly show the spotting books that I mentioned using one of the strings made by the children to encourage understanding.

We will encourage Talking socially through giving out food, taking our turn to request our juice and saying please and thank you.
The food we will be making this week on our camp fire will be fresh cooked pancakes, shop bought crumpets with butter and some shop bought pancakes.

Looking forward to seeing you all

Take care

Mel

Muddy rainy Monday - Brilliant

This week we saw some lovely recipes for mud paint being made, collaborative learning and some wonderful characteristics of effective learning through persistence and motivation to complete a task.

Really enjoyed the session and hoping that I will get some feed back re the risk assessments.

Thanks everyone for coming, see you next week.

Mel

Monday 22nd July 2015

People always ask me 'how old does my baby need to be to come and enjoy Mini Rangers'
I can confidently say that from the moment your baby looks up and takes in their surroundings Mini Rangers provides exciting experiences for all.  Take for example the simple first communication that babies learn -  pointing. For babies it is usually to fulfil a need or want, but it can be used to communicate something they find exciting.  At mini Rangers the excitement of seeing other children running around, birds in the trees, clanking saucepans, the ducks, the noise of the river all makes for pointing fodder.  Following an 8 month old's gaze or a 14 month old's point can be the start of any parents conversation with their baby.

Key points
 We take pointing for granted
 When we point, we are telling another person that we want them to look at something
 We assume they will understand that there is something like an invisible laser beam that emanates from the end of our index finger in an exact straight line until it reaches the solid object that we want the other person to concentrate on
 Pointing for need and pointing for shared interest is a development along the pathway of shared communication and eventually toward the use of first words

This week we are turning to chemistry to ignite our young learners.  We are going to attempt to make a mud laboratory!  Don your goggles and gloves! (imaginatively, we don't really need these as the mud will not hurt us, although a baby wipe or two and some hand sanitizer might be an idea).  We are going to collect some objects in our environment to mix together.  We will look at the size, shape, colour and smell of what we have collected.  We will then ask ourselves 'What will happen if I mix this object with the other object' .

I will bring the paintbrushes back this week and we can see if we can make anything that we can use as paint?  We can also have a look in the environment to see if there is anything that we can use as paintbrushes may be a stick or a leaf or a blade of grass?

We have all been looking at the way our children interact with their environment I will be brining some blank risk assessment forms for you to take away and have a think about, they are what I use in childminding and they sometimes reassure me when I am taking an outing I have not taken before.  I hope they are useful for you too.

Marina is providing our snack this week, she is looking at the bright colours of Peppers.

Looking forward to seeing you all

Mel

Our Bear Hunt

 We told a walking story today of Michael Rosen's 'We're going on a bear hunt' .  We got the children to experience and imagine different elements of the story, this enables children to build up a sensory experience of the story and when reflecting with the pictures tell the story.  So here is a reminder of what the pictures mean.....

We're going on a bear hunt

 Uh uh Grass!  Long wavy grass.  We can't go over it.  We can't go under it. Oh no! We've got to go through it!

Swishy Swashy!

Here Neil has set up a representation of a river. Splash splosh!

Thick Oozy wood chips to represent the mud!the children could be heard squelch, squerching through!

some though just stopped for a play!

Building up anticipation in stories is important, here Neil is telling everyone they are about to enter the forest the big dark forest.Stumble, trip!

Once the story was over we took our cups of shaving foam and paintbrushes in order to make a trail on our walk so that we could find our way back after we had found our bears!!!!

These children were the first to paint the trees and the leaves.

Some great mark making on the log, some children were making crosses and some were making the initial letter of their name.

Finally we found the bears having a pic nic!  Everyone retrieved their favourite friend and then it was time for sultanas, biscuits and juice!

What a great Mini Rangers session, thanks everyone for making it brilliant.

Monday 15th June 2015

'If you go down to the woods today....'  You'll find a bear hunt!!  

Yes bring a bear and we will hide it in the woods and go on a unique bear hunt where your child will hunt for their own bear.

We will have a supply of shaving foam and paintbrushes so that you can mark your way through the woods on the trees around you.

The benefits of this experience will be from the purposeful mark making, to the excitement of finding your own bear.

You will then find your way back into our area and have the story which of course will be

'We're going on  a bear hunt'

The snack this week will be raisins.

Photos of Duck Day

Children are using the Wood chippings as they would mud, and with all the bugs that are lurking around plenty to surprise them.  Lots of stirring, scooping and all in Etherow parks shade.

The Den children can be seen here collaborating with each other to take turns in sitting inside the den.  A few disagreements, but this all helps children build up their understanding about social interaction.

Here is our lovely Ranger Steve getting the fire ready for our bananas and chocolate.  The children listened really well to Ranger Steve's instructions on how to behave near fire.  I noticed how the children made sure they sat on the logs far away from the fire.  Well done Mini Rangers.

Wonderful sensory activity making duck food, not only is this a valuable experience to run the ingredients through our fingers extending this to look for one grain of rice or one lentil can be very rewarding for training that pincer grip.  If you are doing it at home you could maybe add tweezers and pots.

Thank you everyone for such a lovely Duck day..


See you soon

Mel

Mini Rangers - Monday 8 June 2015

Well what a wet end to last term!

and while I quite enjoyed the opportunities that the rain afforded I couldn't help wishing that we had ended with sunshine!

So after my mammoth Coast2Coast bike ride during the first week of the holidays and a relaxing childminding second week I feel renewed and refreshed ready for another exciting term of Mini Rangers.

However a new term and new opportunities so we are bringing duck day back!  I am going to ask for people to bring any favourite ducks from home, and any duck facts they have.

We will be looking at ways of making duck food from things we might find in our very own kitchens!  The children will enjoy running it through their fingers and making little cups of food up to feed the ducks on the way back to the car park.

We will be looking at cooking a special recipe of bananas with an option to put a piece of chocolate into it and see what happens.  Giving children the opportunity to wrap their banana in foil and either add chocolate or don't!

I will be hiding some more eggs around our area so keep a look out, and bring them to our circle time to show everyone what is inside!

So I look forward to seeing you on Monday and hearing about the fun you have had over the holidays.

Mel