A bee at the Honeycomb

RUGBEES Rugbees is a 30 minute rugby structured play session for boys and girls aged 18  months - 5 years that combines coordination, ball skills and learning to play as a team. The activities bring together ball skills while also introducing numbers, counting colours and shapes to the participants. Rugby specific skills include finding a space, holding and running with the ball, passing the ball backwards, scoring a try and converting over a (miniature) try post. There are many benefits of ball play to child development including improving hand eye coordination and helping to master gross motor skills. Introducing children to sport and activity at a young age encourages them to get excited about exercise inspiring an active and healthy lifestyle from a young age. Many of the activities performed during a Rugbees session involve crossing the midline which is important to development on both a physical and cognitive level. Crossing the midline will help the lef...

           STEM is learning through investigation, experimentation and fun. STEM combines some of my favourite things. Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths and the best bit? There is not a text book in sight! You may also see STEM named STEAM where ART is included. Personally, I prefer STEM purely because I love gardening, plants and it suggests growth, however, I still put Art into the mix and one of my all time favourite activities is art inspired by times tables – what better way to learn them? I first started a STEM club back in 2007 with the brilliant Ian Murphy (now a Deputy Head Teacher at Heron Hill Primary School in Kendal) when we were teachers together at Britannia Village Primary School in East London. With a small group of 9 & 10 year olds we had the most fun testing out different theories, experimenting with different materials and expanding our knowledge. Some of my favourite activities were: Fun at one of our me...

Puppy Therapy - letting all your worries melt away! Thursday may well have been one of my favourite days ever - puppies at work! And though there is no denying that they were a bit of a distraction, we did still manage to get some work done too ... though there was definitely a lot of cuddling! This was also quite an accomplishment as back in 2011 my year 6 class wrote persuasive letters to the head teacher for why we should be allowed to have a school dog, to no avail so finally I got to have dogs at work!! Kindness is .... reading a book to tired puppies! The visit was part of our Kindness Month initiative where we have chosen BSPCA as our charity of the month. All money collected in our donations box will go to them this month and we are also collecting donations of dog and cat food too. So please drop by and donate a few pula or when you are shopping pick up an extra tin of dog or cat food or bag of biscuits. Happiness! The puppies all came from the BSPCA who cu...

Play dough - my favourite! Rainbow foam - so tempting to jump into! From the sound of it, messy play is every mother’s nightmare yet it is considered a very important part of children’s learning through play. Exploring a wide range of different sensory experiences is incredibly valuable to a child’s cognitive and creative development. Many children find messy play relaxing as it gives them a chance for free, unstructured experimentation where they can express their feelings as they explore the materials. It also gives vast opportunities for developing fine motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination as they learn about the properties of the different materials and practise a whole host of different skills such as measuring, pouring and mixing.  Jelly is so much fun! And edible for those who like to explore with their mouths!! There is no right or wrong way of doing messy play though sometimes the less input  from the adult, the greater amount of learning goe...