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.

Mini Rangers sound of the week 'h' 26th January 2015

Snowy Etherow saw 31 Mini Rangers arrive for fun in the snow with the sound 'r'.  Here you can see Oliver with his Robot that he cleverly added stick legs too, he is showing real creativity in seeing what he has been given and adding to it.  

We lit the fire without Ranger Steve last week so I think that shows that we are learning about outdoor living,  It was a plus as well because there were children that really enjoyed the cosy feel of the fire and needed a bit of a warm up!  Thanks to Helen for bringing me Rhyming Rabbit by Julia Donaldson it was a great book I have been enjoying it at home, although I think it was a bit cold to sit still for too long!  Hopefully we can make it a bit warmer this week!  Suggestions for keeping warm welcome!

Next week we are bringing some warm blackcurrent juice as we did feel that perhaps the children could have done with a warm drink as well.  We will also be bringing extra coffee as that is much needed when taking part in outdoor play!

This coming week our letter is

 

just in case my lovely graphic isn't clear it is 'h' !  I am hoping this week we don't have any hail! If we do I guess it will fit in with the sounds, hey when the weather gives you a gift don't knock it!!!  Seriously though, h is a great letter for Etherow, Heron's and Hedghogs live there so we could talk about their habitats and how humans interact with them and how we can preserve their homes by not disturbing wood piles in the winter. 

I am sure we could dig a few holes with our kitchen spoons if the ground isn't too hard!  

For our activity this week Etherow Visitors centre are supplying us with all the ingredients to make hats!  So if you can find any feathers or leaves that you would like to stick on to your hat please bring them along.

At story time I think it is time to introduce Dr Seuss with 'Horton hears a who'.  The one draw back about introducing phonics to small children is that we are introducing them to sounds so h as in horton is the same as h as in who.  I don't want you to be concerned about this and some parents worry when their child starts writing and this mistake is a common 'spelling' mistake. It will rectify itself and when you are reading stories like 'Horton hears a who' it gives a platform to enable us to point out the different beginnings of each word.  Who is a tricky word and usually if there is a h sound the word begins with h so when it does happen it is sometimes good to find a book that illustrates this.

By now everyone is feeling hungry so we will bring some ham sandwiches made with dairy free bread and dairy free ham.

I hope that sounds good and look forward to seeing you there!  Just a tip if your child does feel the cold it might be worth bringing a hot water bottle or warming pouches as these can just add a bit more comfort, the fire will be lit though and the shelter will be up so hopefully we can make a cosy place for everyone to get a bit warmer in.

The New Year Mini Rangers - Reflections and starting on Monday 5th January 2015 - Bring an empty milk bottle!

Happy New Year Mini Rangers. The new year presents us with opportunities of looking back and appreciating what has gone and then looking forward and as Alison Chapman has recently written in the EYE (Jan2015) this suits children brilliantly as they are natural optimists with a 'can do' attitude.  For Mini Rangers this is exactly what I try to capture by providing an enabling environment full of independent choices, interested adults and plenty to inspire and motivate.

We have had wonderful term pulling the phonic sounds out of our phonic box, s, a, t, p, i, n. in the first half term with activities like seed collecting, apple eating, teddy bears pic nics, pirate ships, ink making and looking for and making nests.  Then we moved on to the next term take on the sounds m, d, g, o, c, k, with activities like the maze, dinosaurs, gruffalo, oranges, cats and kittens!  With our weekly story and activities, the sounds really came to life.

Looking back over the pictures I am so impressed with the environment we have created on a Monday morning.  Our mud kitchen which has been so popular with everyone, the bug hotel (may be in need of some care and attention) and our lovely log circle.  With the help of Ranger Steve and his lovely outdoor fire building, his outdoor games, the lovely Marina and Sam who help out with our snack shack and administration and of course Neil and Paul who help set everything up.  The most impressive of all is the Mini Rangers themselves, who engage with activities set out for them with gusto, who are brave and fearless in the face of the English weather, lucky for us we have had exceptionally good weather and haven't really had to rely on the shelter that is put up every week, or the warmth of the fire that Steve has made, but lets see what January brings.

Looking forward, this term we are about to embark upon the phonic sounds e, u, r, h, b, f.  So to start with let the elephants enter etherow park!  I am talking about that lovely Elmer the elephant.  

If you can all bring one empty, washed out milk bottle I will bring some tissue paper and we will make an elmer the elephant, we will then follow that with the Elmer story and perhaps a quick snack of boiled eggs hopefully on our outdoor fire! Coffee, juice and biscuits as always available.

As every the mud kitchen will be open and all we need is you!

Monday 8th December 2014

We are getting really excited about Christmas this week.  So instead of a phonic sound this week 'Stick man' is inspiring us.

So Neil will be reading 'Stickman' and we will be having bread sticks for snacks and we will be making stick men from sticks.

So bring your festive spirit and your warm clothes and join us for a pre festive treat!

Mel

Monday 20 March 2014

Hi again,

It is Sunday evening and I am putting together my plan for tomorrow, which is to all intents and purposes our End of Term Halloween party.  We have finished the first segment of phonic sounds 'satpin' and therefore I will be handing out certificates to celebrate our first part of the phonics journey.  There is a chance it will be a wet one, but as always mini-rangers dress for the weather we don't stay in!!!

So let us look back over our glorious half term of mini rangers, it has been fantastic.  At our high point we had 70 bodies in our little area and have regularly been seeing eager mini rangers no matter the weather.  We have had the most amazing September/October weather wise as you will see from these fantastic pictures to remind us of our first half term:

snake in the box, can you see that lovely dry ground!!!
Following this we had apples, ants and Alice!!!
 A teddy bears picnic with twigs, tennis on the lawn, toast that was really home made bread and butter and a tidy area... that led to the puppy pic nic, some putting a snack of pears and pineapples.  We've had insects and ink made of mud. Then finally we have had our week of 'n' remember our nests, I think some people have still to collect theirs.

So we have covered the sounds of 'satpin' and this week we will be presenting you with a certificate to commemorate your time with us and to remind you all that we have used lots of physical ideas to convey our sound and we have read books to repeat that sound.   

Anne Meade, in her work One Hundred Billion Neurons: How do they become organised? (2001) considered the connection between play and brain development Her study found that play gives children vital opportunities to lay down implicit memories of skills, dispositions and schemas. Our efforts to teach phonic sounds through active physical play takes into consideration children's need to repeat and to actively experience sounds, smells, and touch to make the vital connections with the phonic sounds that we want them to remember.

I have spent Saturday morning at a Creative Minds conference and in this we discussed the importance of children's schemas on their approach to learning and retaining different information.  I am always interested in how your children are approaching the learning and would like to ask you to answer the following questions:

Have you noticed your child repeating any of the sounds we have talked about?

If yes in what situation?

Have you been reminded to mention the sounds when you see them out and about?

Do you have a street sign that you and your child have looked at a little more closely?

Have you repeated any of the activities at home to remind your child of the sounds that they have heard?

I really appreciate your input and hope that we can continue  even as the weather gets colder and a bit damper.

Thank you again for your continued support

Melanie Commins,  EYTS

Monday 6th, October, 2014 - Phonic Sound 'i'

It is that time of the week again and we are thinking about the next sound in our phonics journey.  This week we are introducing the sound 'i' not to be confused with its partner eye!  We are talking about itchy, igloo's, ink, ingredients and insects.  So this is how I am proposing to approach the sound....

I have found a great book 'itchy bear' by Neil Griffiths, I think that we can all relate to an itchy bear.

This week we have volunteers a plenty with Tracey-Anne volunteering to provide us with our natural ink activity.  She is going to be helping you and your child to whittle a twig with a potato peeler and use natural ink to create lovely art on the bits of cloth we will provide.  Natural ink can be made from the natural supplies we have in the surrounding area.  If you can find any blackberries left we could make purple, any part of an oak we can make brown, nettle tops make yellow (please bring some gardening gloves if you have any!) sweet chestnut twigs make a brown ink as do conkers and elder berries give lovely blues and purples. Or we can mix a little mud in a bowl with water and that makes a nice deep brown ink.

Another idea is hammering leaves, this will need to be supported by yourself as I feel that we could have a few hurt thumbs if we leave it to the children alone!!!

I think finding a snack beginning with 'i' is going to lead to us taking artistic licence.  Helen Hurren is going to be making us some fairy cakes so that we can talk about the 'i'ngredients used to go in the cake.     I am going to try to make some 'i'njera bread, which is an Ethiopian bread suggested by Annabel Bradbury that consists of water, flour and a pinch of salt.  Paul Taylor has said that he is going to man the BBQ this week so we should be able to cook them fresh.  I think they are a little like pancakes, obviously if there is anyone more experienced at this please help.  

We will of course be providing our usual coffee, juice and biscuits, but you may need to bring any other refreshments your child may require during our time in the wild!

Jo Frost has offered to build us an 'i'gloo using our willow twigs and a sheet, I think she could use some young assistants to make this.

Marina will be assisting with the administrative tasks of taking the register and collecting the funds. This is going very well and we are hoping to connect with the friends of Etherow at some point to ask for their advice on how to spend the money we are raising in order to improve our little area.  

Neil is going to be making insects from leaves, pine cones and berries.  

We look forward to seeing the return of Ranger Steve, but last week he was called away on urgent business in rural Wales, so hopefully he has returned safe and sound and back to our little group.

I would like to thank every one who has attended Mini Rangers, I was so excited last week to see so many interested and happy faces.  The children all seem really engaged and eager to meet the challenges set up for them.

In our circle time this week I will be introducing a few instruments.  I will bring all the instruments that I have, but I feel that it won't be enough, so if you could bring an instrument with you that would be brilliant.

As always looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.  

Melanie Commins
EYTS

Stay and Play with the Mini Rangers

After being asked to set up a stay and play group by the Etherow Country Park visitors centre I wondered what would parents find the most useful.  There are many groups that provide wonderful activities for young children, but what could I offer that would benefit the children around me. So we started off with a meeting place and a walk around the park.  This was lovely, but for some children the undertaking was enormous and could have been done with just their carers and probably was being done often enough.  I thought that if we were going to offer something it had to be something tangible to do with unveiling the mysteries of introducing phonics.

For the first terms sessions I didn't touch Phonics as there is sometimes a fear of teaching young children and I really didn't want to alienate the wonderful parents, what I really wanted to put into place was experiences.  So to start with I used activities like feeding the ducks, following duck prints, planting seeds, grass heads, clay sculptures using sticks, flowers and leaves, blackberry painting to introduce children to the outdoor experiences that leave children with a token of their time to reflect on when they return home. These activities were lovely and watching the children I could see that they needed more than this I needed to put something purposeful learning behind it.  This led me to develop my sound box!

It also meant that we took ownership of the Etherow Country Park's learning area, I roped in a few helpers an ex ranger Steve who worked at Etherow Country Park until his retirement and my loyal and creative husband and together we created a central meeting point:

This means that we have somewhere sheltered to meet up and discuss keeping safe, it is where we talk, read our stories and show our objects that correlate to our sounds. We have also created a bug hotel:

A Den making area hidden under a bush, to give children somewhere to squirrel away safely in, but also so it is out of the way of passers by:

We have also introduced a mud kitchen and we have started to provide a drink and a snack to all our participants.

The group is well attended by a lovely mix of childminders, parents, grandparents and nannies and everyone is welcome.  Last week we had two lovely volunteers who assisted in mud pie making and drink and snack serving.  

The hope is that we introduce all these lovely people to the joys of early phonics which includes listening to the noises in the environment, attaching a sound to a picture in the same way we attach a sound to a picture of an animal.  Add Jolly phonic actions to each sound and tie the whole thing up with a fun relaxed morning.