Hotwells Children’s House

Hotwells Children’s House Montessori - Early Years Education - Inclusion - Relationship based - Independent - Community

🍓 June 🍓We are all feeling amazed that we have nearly come to the end of our first full year as Hotwells Children’s Hous...
08/07/2025

🍓 June 🍓
We are all feeling amazed that we have nearly come to the end of our first full year as Hotwells Children’s House. What a joy it has been to spend the Summer months with these little people!
June was full of sunshine and play outside as well as starting to think about transitions, both for children leaving our nursery and for new children starting in September. We’ve been hosting stay and plays, writing transfer records, and gently supporting children to think about starting at school. For us next year will be a big change as many of our leavers will go to - meaning we will still get to see them every day! At our old setting we sent children to a huge range of primary schools, so this will be a new experience for us!

📣 Calling all Bristol Early Years Practitioners 📣 Bristol Early Years Anti-Racist Practice ForumEaston Community Childre...
03/07/2025

📣 Calling all Bristol Early Years Practitioners 📣

Bristol Early Years Anti-Racist Practice Forum
Easton Community Children’s Centre
Tuesday 8th July 5.30-7.30

It’s our last forum session of the year - and what a session it will be. The focus is on policy, with lots of time for reflection and chat.
Everyone who attends will get:
- Free BAND anti-racism policy template
- Free staffroom poster ‘… but what do I say?’
- The opportunity to borrow books from our new, free lending library, take away a children’s book for your setting and a book for your staffroom so that you can put this work into practice straight away.

Please share far and wide!
Love,
Erin, Izzy, Beth and Shaddai


🌈 Celebrating Pride 🌈Here are a selection of the books we have had out this month to introduce children to Pride. Our br...
26/06/2025

🌈 Celebrating Pride 🌈
Here are a selection of the books we have had out this month to introduce children to Pride.
Our brains start to notice difference in babyhood, so we believe we have a unique window of time in early childhood to normalise and celebrate protected characteristics. Making these really visible in our environment means that children see that families can look lots of different ways - and our team support this through conversation. We might say “some children have a mummy and a daddy, some children have two mummies, some children have two daddies” - we use age and stage appropriate language, normalising all family set-ups. Our goal is for our nursery to feel like a safe space for everyone. All are welcome here.

✨ Come and join our team ✨Due to expansion when we move into our final classroom we are looking for one more Montessori ...
24/06/2025

✨ Come and join our team ✨
Due to expansion when we move into our final classroom we are looking for one more Montessori or Early Years Practitioner to join our team.
We can offer a truly child led approach to early childhood education, working as part of a close knit and supportive team, to better than statutory ratios. Get in touch to find out more.
The role is 8.00/8.30 - 16.00/16.30 (to be discussed), Monday to Thursday. We are a term time only setting and are based in Hotwells, Bristol.

🫧🧽🪛🔧 FOSTERING INDEPENDENCE 🔧🪛🧽🫧 At Hotwells Children’s House we are followers of Maria Montessori’s quote ‘help me to d...
14/06/2025

🫧🧽🪛🔧 FOSTERING INDEPENDENCE 🔧🪛🧽🫧 At Hotwells Children’s House we are followers of Maria Montessori’s quote ‘help me to do it myself’. We put great care into preparing our environment so that we can help children learn how to do things for themselves. We do this in lots of different ways. One example is through our ‘Activities of Everyday Living’, where children learn skills such as buttoning, zipping and tying laces; using different tools such as tweezers, tongs and pipettes; and, practical skills such as pe***ng clothes, bathing a baby doll and polishing toy cars. We teach children how to serve themselves snacks, pour themselves and their friends a drink and how to wash up afterwards. By providing a child-sized environment and the right tools alongside a supportive community and the space and time that they need to practise, we provide children with everything they need on their journey to become independent young people. Our trust in them and their experience of doing things for themselves builds their confidence and self-esteem.

🎨 The Holly Room 🎨At our last setting, the room with all our art materials was called the Holly room, and it’s a name we...
04/06/2025

🎨 The Holly Room 🎨
At our last setting, the room with all our art materials was called the Holly room, and it’s a name we can’t seem to let go of! Our reimagined ‘Holly’ space is full of open ended, high quality resources - allowing children to create, explore and relax.
This week a big collaborative piece has been popular, we gave the children the challenge of covering up all the blank space, and they’re definitely getting closer as the days go on!
We have also enjoyed lots of sensory exploration of paint and clay. Swipe through to see some high focus clay and water mixing!

🐌 May 🐌 What a beautiful month May was. We are settled into our new space and have spent so much time outside enjoying t...
04/06/2025

🐌 May 🐌
What a beautiful month May was. We are settled into our new space and have spent so much time outside enjoying the weather. A particular highlight is ‘snail wall’, where we have spotted snails, slugs, spiders, ear wigs and other mini beasts. One snail was particularly well cared for and awoke to a feast of leaves!
We also have enjoyed having our world map back up - it uses the Montessori continent colour coding, and we have a song to go with it that I sang when I was a child at Montessori!

📚 Some of our favourites 📚These have been some of our favourite books over the past few weeks:1. Little Faces Big Feelin...
19/05/2025

📚 Some of our favourites 📚
These have been some of our favourite books over the past few weeks:
1. Little Faces Big Feelings by Amy Morrison - Brilliant photographs, the children find it fascinating seeing how different people might express different emotions.
2. Blocks by Irene Dickson - This is one of our core books for our younger children. It has simple text, lots of repetition and some big moments to talk about!
3. Colour and Me by Michaela Dias-Hayes - a celebration of the colour brown and how to mix it with paint to make skin tones.
4. Colours by Shirley Hughes - a classic!
5. Going to School by Rose Blake - we are slowly starting to introduce some school books ahead of the transition for our preschoolers, we find a slow and steady approach at the children’s pace helps to avoid any big feelings of anticipation anxiety!

🪏 Sand 🪏We have been so enjoying sand in the garden. Yesterday we mixed it with water and children drove their cars thro...
08/05/2025

🪏 Sand 🪏
We have been so enjoying sand in the garden. Yesterday we mixed it with water and children drove their cars through it, exploring the marks they made in the wet sand.
Scroll through for a discovery about one of our trucks! A very helpful child was trying to return some sand to the sandpit - deciding to use a truck to do it, however they quickly discovered a problem with their plan! 🕳️

🌻 September Spaces 🌻 We have a small number of spaces remaining for children to join us in September. Contact us for mor...
08/05/2025

🌻 September Spaces 🌻
We have a small number of spaces remaining for children to join us in September. Contact us for more information and to come and look around.
We take children from age two until they start Primary School.

🌞 April 🌞April was a month of change for us as we settled into our new classroom, the change in layout and space meant l...
06/05/2025

🌞 April 🌞
April was a month of change for us as we settled into our new classroom, the change in layout and space meant little tweaks to routines and lots of discussion to make everything run smoothly. Whilst the adults were working everything out the children straight away have made the most of the increased space both inside and out. The weeks of sunshine were the icing on the cake, with lots of joyful time spent outdoors.

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