Gemma's Childminding

03/01/2026

Caterpillar Music Newark is starting a new session at Yarborough Leisure Centre.

We love our weekly sessions so wanted to let others know they can enjoy them too!!

✨ NEW VENUE ANNOUNCEMENT ✨
Caterpillar Music Newark is coming to 2 new venues in January.

Wednesdays at Yarborough Leisure Centre
Thursdays at Rolleston Village Hall

To celebrate, I’m offering a Founding Families – New Venue Welcome Offer for our very first families 💛

✔️ 6-week block at a special rate
✔️ Limited spaces
✔️ Designed for quality time, connection & play

To be the first to access this offer comment 'Founding' or WhatsApp me 07443 536758

Offer will be announced tomorrow, 29th December :-)

23/12/2025

14/12/2025

Last week we enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree.

There has been more Christmas crafts and singing our Christmas songs.
We have also enjoyed our usual play with the small world toys, reading stories, playing in the garden and going for walks.

Our Caterpillar music session was all about 'The Gruffalo' xx

08/12/2025

Last week we started to get festive.

We have done some Christmas crafts.

We added christmas items to our small world play, role play, song time, stories and our loose parts play!!

Of Caterpillar Music too 🐛🎵last week we were 'Down on the farm'

🎅🎄🤶🎁

01/12/2025

Its that time of year again when the children will be creating some lovely Christmas themed crafts.
I am a true believer in Process over Product.
I dont force the children to participate but if they approach the table I encourage them but never interfere. We may have some crafts that take forever to dry to the excessive amount of glue or paint and we may have some with the odd blob - either way it will be the childs own work xx

29/11/2025

Thie week we have enjoyed reading 'Stick Man'

We have been for lots of walks looking for sticks.
We have added sticks to the sand and created sandcastles using the sticks as masts for our flags.
We have explored 'snow' unfortunately we havent had any real snow so we made our own using cornflour and hair conditioner.
We played our own game of 'pooh sticks'

We have also enjoyed our usual activities such as painting, mark making, roleplay, small world to name a few and of course Caterpillar music xx

23/11/2025

Its been a busy week!!

We have enjoyed -

☆Roleplay
☆Mark making - on drawing boards, with pens and with paint
☆Small world - Noahs Ark with the animals and the dolls house.
☆Construction with the wooden bricks
☆Exploring the ice in the garden
☆Using the song bag to help us choose our songs to sing - its full of objects that represent different nursery rhymes
☆Going for walks - learning we have to wrap up to stay warm at this time of year
☆Blowing bubbles - great for building up the muscles in our mouths for speaking and of course eating
☆Books - looking at them independently and sharing stories with Gemma and our friends

And not forgetting our caterpillar music session - the theme was 'Green'.

15/11/2025

The final rhyme of World Nursery Rhyme week was 'Two little dickie birds'.

With the torrential rain and gale force winds I made the executive decision that it probably wasnt too safe for us to be out looking for birds. I also think the birds would have agreed it wouldnt be safe for them to be sitting on a wall for us to find them!!

We enjoyed spending time inside not only singing about birds but also all our favourite rhymes - Wheels on the bus, Miss Polly, Baa baa black sheep, Wind the bobbin up, The Grand old Duke of York (lots of marching) and so many more.

We enjoyed playing the instruments, dancing with the coloured scarves, lights and bubbles xx

13/11/2025

Today's nursery rhyme was 'I hear thunder'.

We started the day using pans and metal spoons and rainmakers to make the sound of Thunder and Pitter Patter raindrops.

We have had the loveliest day so far this week so we also sang songs about the sun -
'the sun has got his hat on' and 'Mr Golden Sun'
(We didnt want to scare the sun away with all this talk of thunder and rain!!)

We went on a 'listening walk' this morning. Its amazing how much you can hear when you are out and about.....

☆Dogs barking
☆Birds singing
☆Car horns
☆Sirens
☆The Red Arrows
☆Motorbike
☆Lorries reversing (beep, beep)
☆Crunchy of leaves under our feet
☆Power tools...........thankfully we didnt hear any thunder!!

We also wanted to jump in more puddles but there wasnt any so we created our own in the tuff tray and used colanders in the water table to create the 'pitter patter' raindrop sound xx

12/11/2025

Todays nursery rhyme was 'When I was one...'

We have enjoyed exploring the pirate ship.
Counting to 5.
Wearing the pirate hat and singing the rhyme....over and over.

We also went for a walk today to see if we could find puddles left by the rain we have had over the last few days!!! Everyone had the best time running, jumping and splashing!! Xx