Wood’s Childcare

13/02/2026

Valentines and birthday fun to end the half term! We celebrated one of the acorns 1st birthdays this week! Balloons, cake and a trip to the Softplay before sensory play with coloured rice.

Many of the acorns enjoy moving objects from one place to another, including tipping toys from one container to another so this activity helped them to continue exploring the transporting schema by pouring the rice into the different containers provided and then around the room into whatever they could find 😂 They did do a great job at helping to sweep up the stray rice afterwards!

Our youngest acorns enjoyed exploring the sensory basket whilst the older ones created their own valentines cupcakes using loose parts such as petals and pom poms. We ended the week with valentines playdough which got squished and squashed into cupcakes and cut up with wooden knives and spoons from our kitchen area.

Something very exciting is happening in the Wood’s Childcare garden 😍 The acorns loved watching the digger in action until rain halted proceedings. Watch this space!

6 weeks have flown by. Have a lovely weekend all! Sending valentines love your way ❤️

06/02/2026

Vehicles! ✈️🚜🚗🛳️🚂 One of the acorns’ all round favourites so we had so much fun engaging in all the activities this week. The train track comes out every day without fail. The acorns love connecting the different parts of the track and pushing the trains over bridges and into tunnels. We balanced cars on our tuff tray roads and rolled vehicles down ramps. I’ve recently bought a new bed and these wooden bed frame slats from my old one made great ramps! The acorns worked out if we move them together we can make a giant ramp for the larger vehicles and one of the acorns experimented with what happens to the vehicles if the ramp is covered with her special blanket - which they all found highly amusing! The weather hasn’t been wonderful, but we managed to get out and play with the toy boats and submarines and enjoy a trip to the train station and wave to the passengers! We really enjoyed painting with cars and washing the cars afterwards in soapy water. My recent purchase of a giant transporter truck went down a treat - I’d seen on other childcare pages and also from talking to other childminders that have this toy that it is very well played with and they were right! It might be huge 🥴 but it has been well loved here already! Have a lovely weekend all!

30/01/2026

Our activities this week were inspired by the book ‘The Colour Monster’. Language was explored around different colours, but also different feelings - particularly happy and sad. The acorns dived right into the spaghetti messy play at the beginning of the week! The spaghetti started on the tray, but eventually made its way into pots and pans in our play kitchen. It was stretched and mixed, pulled and pushed into different containers. The acorns loved reading the book and fetching the correct colour monster as we reached each different feeling to hold. They made happy and sad faces using loose parts both inside and outside. We discussed how many eyes we have and counted them on ourselves, the teddies and the dolls even though we enjoyed adding multiple eyes to the craft creations 🤣 The acorns looked at their faces in the mirror and they enjoyed pulling silly faces or watching me pull some! Such a colourful week with endless opportunities to extend learning as the children played with different coloured toys around the room - sorting, stacking, squishing, connecting! Have a lovely weekend all!

24/01/2026

People who help us! 🚒🚓🚑 Particularly the emergency services this week! It was so much fun role playing firefighters and doctors. I’ve had my blood pressure checked, my heart monitored, a number of injections and lots of medicine so it’s safe to say I’ve been well looked after 🤣. The acorns were very brave putting out a rather large fire on the tuff tray in the garden and I managed to receive an extra shower in the process 🚿! We took a walk through town to see what emergency service vehicles we could spot and passed the fire station on the way to the park where our older acorns worked on their gross motor skills climbing ladders up to the slides just like the firefighters. They were reaching new heights climbing at the soft play too- wonderful to see their confidence increasing! Another busy week! Hope you’re all having a wonderful weekend!

16/01/2026

Polar animals this week! 🐻‍❄️🐧 The acorns loved exploring the small world sensory trays using ice and white jelly cubes for icebergs. Their favourite part was pushing the penguins off the side of the tray and watching them splash into the water. We visited the penguins at Whipsnade Zoo and enjoyed waddling like penguins whilst singing ‘Have you Ever Seen a Penguin Come to Tea?’ 🎶 The older acorns enjoyed a spot of ‘ice fishing’ using the magnetic fishing game and a painted cardboard box with a hole cut in it. They always choose to get this game out when playing so it was nice to play it with a polar twist and the extra challenge of trying to catch the fish through the hole. Finger painting was used to create a cute penguin craft and the acorns explored the tracks the different animals make when pressed into playdough. Lots of fun was had at the farm Softplay on a particularly rainy morning! Have a lovely weekend all!

09/01/2026

09/01/2026

Happy New Year! We’ve had a fantastic, frosty week. We stayed home to settle the acorns back slowly into routines and enjoyed lots of activities making the most of the icy conditions outside - sensory play, mark making in the frost, ice painting, making snow tracks in cloud dough, painting with coloured ice cubes (although colours weren’t as bright as I’d hoped so we went over them with paint sticks 🤣) and melting ice using warm water to release the mega blocks we needed to make our ice palaces! Stay warm and have a lovely weekend all!

19/12/2025

And we’ve finished for the Christmas holidays! A fabulous final week of the term full of festive fun. The acorns loved playing with our snowy scene train track and building their own (mainly knocking down 😂) Christmas trees and decorative creations using the coloured, transparent building blocks. We attended a wonderful Christmas party organised by a group of local childminders. It was a great way to round off the first full term of Wood’s Childcare and I am so grateful to have received such fantastic support and advice along the way from them all. The acorns even got the chance to meet Santa - though I was the only one smiling about it 😂.
A huge thank you to the Wood’s Childcare families who are just the best. I feel very blessed heading into the holidays.
Have a very merry Christmas everyone! See you in 2026!

12/12/2025

Christmas week 2! The acorns have been busy filling stockings, baking gingerbread cookies, playing with indoor snow and decorating baubles. The fake snow even tempted my two older boys down to the playroom after school (which is rare! 😂 )They’ve all been looking super cute in their Christmas outfits and trying on Santa’s hat! Of course, another trip to the woods was in order as the favourite activity for our walkers at the moment is jumping in muddy puddles. We admired the Christmas trees on sale whilst keeping an eye out for the nearest puddle 🤭 I can’t believe next week is the last week of the term! Where does the time go?! Have a lovely weekend all!

05/12/2025

05/12/2025

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! We started December as we mean to go on - full of Christmas cheer and sparkle 🤩
The acorns helped to decorate our playroom felt tree (which I’m sure will be re-decorated countless times over the next few weeks) and loved adding festive stickers to the windows. We visited Christmas displays to look at the lights, added baubles to trees outside and took the most beautiful walk through the evergreen trees at Rushmere Country Park. The older acorns made some decorations with pine cones found along the way. Looking forward to next week! So many fantastic activities to choose from at this time of year. Have a lovely weekend all!

28/11/2025

Hats, gloves, scarves, wellington boots 🧤🧣 - winter clothes definitely needed this week as the weather turned frosty! The acorns helped dress Mr Bear for the cold weather and in turn, themselves! They found items on our washing line that we needed for going out to jump in muddy puddles in the woods and visit the farm. Our older acorns used paint sticks to decorate their own woolly hats and enjoyed trying on the ‘boogie toes’ socks to listen to their feet rattle as they danced around. Have a lovely weekend all!