Blog posts from 2020
Looking for ways to keep your little ones entertained around the house?
We have collected together a few of our favourite activities to try at home for any family who might find themselves needing to entertain a few children around the house over the coming weeks.
Is there still a place for plastic building blocks in a loose parts, natural environment nursery and pre-school? Building blocks are a powerful learning tool and help children to develop their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness and reasoning. Annie Tierney, Head of Operations, discusses why we still have plastic building blocks in our nurseries and sets your children a challenge for this week.
This is a great tool to help promote positive behaviour, but it also provides a wonderful sensory experience for younger children.
Why can’t reindeers be blue? Make Christmas crafts about enjoyment rather than the end product.
Annie Tierney, Head of Operations, speaks about how easy it is for us to lose sight of what is important for the child when making Christmas crafts, and focus too much on creating something for the parents or a display board. When we do this, we are only thinking about the end product and not on the child’s creativity, imagination and the benefits which they gain through being able to freely be involved in arts, crafts and creative activities.
Cotton reels, curtain rings, beads, buttons, tins, pots, pegs, stones and feathers. These are known as loose parts, and are a key part of the Kindred vision.
These extraordinary times are frightening, confusing and difficult to explain to young children. Many wonder why they can’t see family and friends and miss them terribly. Nosy Crow has launched a free online book, illustrated by Axel Scheffler and written in conjunction with leading medical experts, headteachers and child psychologists, to help parents answer those difficult questions.
One minute wow: Three amazing ice experiments that you can do at home.
This is a fun and simple activity you can do at home and create some beautiful pictures at the same time.
Just like adults, children have bad days, sad days, days where they cannot be bothered or feel overwhelmed with big emotions and the way they present this is just a normal reaction to these feelings and emotions. So, how can you help?
Mark making is more than just writing and starts from a young age. It is a sensory experience, that develops as they begin to understand that marks can carry meaning and ignites their imagination and creative skills.