With Autumn on the way, we’ve found 5 great activities for you and your little one to enjoy as the leaves begin to fall!
With Autumn on the way, we’ve found 5 great activities for you and your little one to enjoy as the leaves begin to fall!
Here at Nannyjob we love summer, we really do, but lots of think autumn is our favourite season and here’s why.
1. Conkers. I’m never going to get over my excitement at finding a shiny brown conker and you can use them for so many things. Throw them, grow them, squash them, smash them. Conkers are great.
2. Dry leaves. One of my favourite things to do is to go for a walk kicking up lots of dry leaves. I hope this year it will stay dry so we can play in them.
3. Preparing for Christmas. I know it’s September but I love Christmas and it starts at the end of November for me! Christmas crafts, Christmas songs and plotting Christmas presents all make me really happy.
4. Dark evenings. Some people hate them but I like heading home in the dark and coming back to a warm and bright house.
5. Hot chocolate. Finally an excuse to warm up by drinking some hot chocolatey milky goodness whether it’s out and about or at home. I like to add ginger or cinnamon to mix it up a bit.
6. Pumpkins. I love carving pumpkins ready for Halloween and they taste pretty good too. One of my favourites is pumpkin pie from when I spent a year as an au pair in the US. You don’t even have to cut up a pumpkin to make it!
7. Cute hats and scarves. I love novelty hats on children and I crochet my charges a new hat every year. They’re going to be a frog and a bunny so if you see us, wave hello.
8. My Ugg boots. Banished for the summer they can come out from the bottom of the wardrobe. They’re probably the comfiest thing I’ve ever owned.
9. Apples. I know what you’re thinking, all the things so far have been really unhealthy. I even made pumpkin unhealthy! But in season apples are one of my fave foods, especially in a crumble.
10. Fires. At the risk of sounding like a pyromaniac I love bonfires. I love seeing the flames, hearing the crackling and smelling the smoke from a wood fire. Possibly best avoided with children, though…
Back to school is often a nightmarish time for working parents. At a time of year where colds, illness, and head lice are rife, not to mention tantrums and an unwillingness to go back to school, it’s a time where your nanny can make the difference between a bad day and a great day.
We’ve put together our top tips for both nannies and parents to help with the back-to-school transition.
Child-led play is exactly what it sounds like; children choose what to play and the adults follow the child’s lead. The sole purpose of this type of play is to allow children to explore and discover independently whilst making their own choices and decisions about what to do.
We’ve put together some tips to help you encourage child-led play whilst also identifying learning opportunities:
Continue reading “What is Child-Led Play and Why is it So Important?”
The summer holidays can be stressful for parents and nannies alike. Trying to find new and exciting activities to keep the kids entertained every day is no easy feat. When you consider the many rainy days experienced in the average British summertime, you might find that you and your children are going a little stir crazy.
Over the summer holidays, libraries all around the country will be pulling out all the stops kids entertained by putting on various activities including hosting character visits and read-a-longs to craft or computer sessions, and much more.
Continue reading “Why You Should Visit Your Local Library This Summer”
British summertime is often unpredictable when it comes to the weather. It’s not unheard of to experience rain, sun, wind and even snow all in the same day. That’s why we’ve put together our top summer holiday activities for kids that you can do, no matter the weather.
British summertime is often unpredictable when it comes to the weather. It’s not unheard of to experience rain, sun, wind and even snow all in the same day. That’s why we’ve put together our top summer holiday activities for kids that you can do, no matter the weather.
Continue reading “Perfect Summer Holiday Activities for Children”
The summer holidays can be a long time, and days out, crafts and cheeky ice creams from the ice cream van soon mount up!
Your term time kitty may not go very far in the holidays so introduce your charges to the idea of budgeting and find a balance of free, low cost and splashing out activities. Developing money sense is important from a young age, and children sometimes love the challenge of finding free or bargain activities to do. It also introduces the concept of making a choice, or several choices, based on a limitation.
Small world play in the Early Years is a style of imaginative play which uses toys or props. It encourages children to use these small props and their imaginations to create detailed and playful worlds. They can use a range of tools to inspire their play, including toys you can make together.
There are few things which make a child feel more powerful than small world play. As well as working their fine motor skills it’s also a great opportunity to learn about the world around them and control what happens.
Small world play in the Early Years is a style of imaginative play which uses toys or props. It encourages children to use these small props and their imaginations to create detailed and playful worlds. They can use a range of tools to inspire their play, including toys you can make together.
Here are 5 ways to make small world play even more fascinating:
Keeping active, getting fit and having fun is what this summer is all about! So we want to challenge you to a 100 mile summer
Keeping active, getting fit and having fun is what this summer is all about! So we want to challenge you to a 100 mile summer.
The idea is that you walk, scoot, bike, swim, skip, hop or move in any other self-propelled way 100 miles before the start of the next school year. You can create a poster to keep you going, with key milestones marked, to track your progress all the way to 100 miles. You can even add in motivating treats and activities along the way if it helps you get going. You can do your 100 miles together with each person travelling 100 miles or you can count each person’ mile towards the total – but being pushed in a buggy doesn’t count! You can colour code your miles according to the type of transport, or according to whose miles they are, as long as you start racking them up.
So on your marks….
Get set….
GO!
With Easter right around the corner, we’ve scoured the internet for some fantastic Easter activities for children of all ages!
