An Feirm Beag

What we do…

dee — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 21:28:31 +0000

I’m in the process of updating the about and services pages so that readers can get a better idea of what services we offer at An Feirm beag. Check out the about page and leave your comments!

Wash our hands…again!

dee — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:07:12 +0000

This morning like many of you I received a big envelope in the post from Safe food, the food safety promotion board here in Ireland. It contained two massive full colour laminate posters teaching a hand washing game similar to the one I posted here some months back in my ‘cut out and keep’ section http://www.mumandminder.com/2010/04/wash-your-hands/

While I think that its great that the government are thinking in terms of educating young children on the importance of hygiene and hand washing and trying to instill such healthy habits, I do think that there are more cost effective and environmentally friendly ways to disseminate such information.

If they made the information available online through the relevant websites for the different childcare sectors, teachers and childcare works could simply learn the game and teach it, along with actions. This would have a far better chance of hitting home with pre-school children who always enjoy a song with actions taught by an engaged teacher. They can’t read our lovely colorful signs anyway!

I received two of these envelopes, so my name must be duplicated on their lists some how but can you just imagine the cost of printing and distribution alone…when they could have just come to my blog

Felt bag making with children 1.

dee — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:02:57 +0000

I hope that you will look at the bags above and be impressed that they were made by a group of three to six year olds! They are actually quite simple and a lot of fun to make, especially if you like to get wet and bubbly!

This is us working away in the art room.

Wool is a wonderful material for this age group to work with, they love the texture and really enjoy speading the colours in order to blend them. Of course the best part comes a day or two later, when you cut them open for the big reveal!

I have outlined the basic steps below.

Help the children to draw and cut out a simple template for the bag, just a simple circle or square is all that is needed, not too big as this will make more work of the child, maybe four or five inches in diameter.
if you are working with a group it is a good idea to write their name on the template. This will help later if they all take a shine to the same bag!
wrap the template well in cling film, working in both directions, this is to make it as waterproof as possible, though it will soften a little as they work anyway.
Template wrapped the children now get to chose their colours, I usually let them work with two. the felt can be broken off the ball gently in sections large enough to go around the entire bag at least once. Spread the colours before you wrap your template so that one will show through the other.
Now that the bag is covered in the chosen colours it can now be wrapped in several layers of un-dyed wool or batting. This will be the inside of the bag, it provides the strength so do cover all holes, working in several directions.

part two of this process to follow!

My education

dee — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:04:43 +0000

I spent the vast majority of my teenage summers camping in France with my family. I learned a lot those summers and it had a huge impact on certain aspects of my attitude to life. Aside from netting me an honour in French, I picked up a lot of my attitude to food from eating and drinking there with French families.

As they say, everything in moderation, even moderation. I had my first drink there, wine bien sûr, enjoyed at the table with my parents and our friends, as I hope one day to do with my almost teenage son (only 7 months to go argh!)

I also like to cook from scratch every day and try to avoid the frozen food option at the end of a long day by just not keeping it in the house. I also try to prepare the main meal before lunch when I am not so tired and sometimes get a few minutes during nap times.

Another thing I try not to stock is shop bought sweets and biscuits, as much for my own sake as anyone else’s, I used to be 6 stone heavier than I am now and I know its a slippery slope. I do make treats and I don’t mind giving the children chocolate – so long as its an ingredient in something I have prepared myself and of good quality, 70 or 80% cocoa. We had our four year old’s birthday party at the weekend and I’m sure some of the mums attending thought I must live on the stuff!

Sound like I know it all? Well don’t worry, I don’t. I have fussy kids and rejected vegetables and a mother looking over my shoulder telling me to give in and give them the chicken nuggets. Am I right to stick it out or am I just stubborn? I don’t know, I know they don’t starve and sometimes I get my way and the casserole gets eaten, even if it is the second time its been put on the table, I think its worth the wait.

Artfarm afternoons @ An Feirm beag

dee — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:03:49 +0000

Artfarm afternoons are starting again, these were hugely popular and ran during term time up to the birth of my last baby and now he’s old enough, we’re up and running again. These afternoons are suitable for children aged 3 to 10 years and they are offered from 3.30pm to 5.30pm Monday to Thursday and on Saturday mornings from 10am to midday. Children can attend all sessions or come once a week, it is not ‘taught’ so they do not miss out on anything, projects can be picked up and left off as suits the child.

I firmly believe that as Picasso said ‘all children are artists, the challenge is remaining an artist when we grow up’. As an adult that has had the honour of working with these artists for the past 12 years, I know I can teach them nothing, but I can facilitate them. I can offer my materials, my home, my garden and the space and time to experiment and be creative.

The evening is made up of a combination of arts and crafts and outdoor play. The experience in nature is vital after a day in school, whether it was the relatively short one in pre-school, or the longer day in national school. The children will have a small garden plot which they will develop themselves, and enjoy the experience of seeing something they plant grow, and hopefully, they will eventually enjoy the fruits of that!

So, I will not ‘teach’ your child anything that is not already within them and they will not traipse home with their arms laden with pictures identical to their friends ones(I promise!), but they will have fun, they will make bags and boxes and other objects, they will knit and paint and sculpt as this kind of work with their hands is so good for them. Most importantly, they will make a mess. The experience of making art, the interaction with colour and three-dimensional form is calming and theraputic for all children and helps them to develop creative thinking that will impact on all aspects of their lives.

What a busy summer!

dee — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:45:23 +0000

I don’t know where the summer has gone! With a new baby settling in, a little pre-schooler art camp in July and another coming up next week, the months have flown.

I’m enjoying being so busy, each day is filled with so much action though, its hard to get time for ‘me’ things!

Every day we take a walk,either here in the hills near my home,

or we go to the beautiful lake beach and forest we are blessed to have only four miles away. We feed the ducks and swans and check out whats growing, my daughter is particularly interested in what is edible!

I have started to get up every morning between 5 and 6 to fit in a bit of writing time before the children wake, this seems the best way to fit it in and the silence at that time makes a nice change of pace!

The art camps are fun, I do felt bag making, collage, painting, gardening and baking, its wonderful to see their excitement as a project unfolds.

So this is how I end my days, exhausted but happy, loading the dishwasher before collapsing in the corner with a book, because it all begins again in a few hours!

my long post break and wild strawberry picking

dee — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:32:10 +0000

I have taken quiet a long break from posting to this blog. This was partly because I have recently welcomed a baby to my home for full time care, and as I’m sure you know if you are a childminder who cares for babies, I’ve been busy! It’s not that I didn’t have a moment to myself, it is more accurate to say that my head was (and still is to a lesser extent) in a different place to that needed for reflective writing.

When a new child starts in my home, it is important to me how that relationship begins and how everyone involved, the baby, my children and myself experiences that transition. In this case, my youngest and the new child are only five months apart. Although in the future this will result in a close friendship for them, for now it creates confusing emotions for a child used to the undivided attention of the primary carer. But I think that we have begun to turn the corner on this and I have in recent days been able to enjoy moments of happy screeching as the babies begin to interact comfortably with each other.

I take the children outside daily and today was the first day in quite some time that we did so in rain. So all wrapped up in rain gear and plastic buggy covers, we set off down the road. We had the happy experience to find that a nearby crop of wild strawberries was ready for picking and small though they are, when we set off for home, we had a good handful for dessert. My daughter led the foraging, informing me that I should ask the grasshopper who was watching us, where the strawberries were hidden. Needless to say, we found the best ones…under some straw and also right down on the bottom of the bushes, near the ground. This was a learning opportunity for me, I needed to get to my daughters height to find the best of the fruit. A lesson in slowness and perspective!

When we came home the children supervised the baking of some meringues which were enjoyed with the fruit after dinner.

ideal environments for children

dee — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:04:19 +0000

As I begin down the Siolta road, I find myself thinking a lot about the environments I provide for the children. In many ways I am blessed in this respect. I have a pretty big house in the countryside with a large garden which is so important to me as I really feel that children need to spend time outdoors every day.

The ‘back’ garden which is actually to the front of the house (which is ”L’ shaped and sort of wraps around the garden but has the road to the back of it, sorry if thats confusing!) is fenced on three sides and open to a courtyard on the fourth. We are in a lovely secluded area and there is usually nothing but the sounds of birds and children to be heard.

In the garden we have a wooden tree house which the older children use as a den. This provides their much needed privacy and the sense that they have a space which is ‘off limits’ to the adults. They have decorated it themselves and they spend many a happy hour there, playing games, listening to music, doing homework (ok, maybe not always so happy).

The ‘first storey’ of this building is a space for the toddlers which consists of some log benches, arranged in a semi-circle to provide for conversation, and a waterproof mat for those who wish to sit on the floor. And thats it. And this space gets tons of use too, the occupants usually consist of the three year old and the 16 month old, using it as an extension of the beloved play house, which is a little pokey when they want to play together.

Another popular environment in the garden is the sand pit. I wrote with amazement a few weeks back about the wide range of age groups that find a use for it here. In the past few months children aged from a few months to 12 years have found a way to play here. It really is amazing the calming affect it has on them, but if you try it for yourself, you begin to see the attraction, just drawing a rake through it is akin to meditation. For more on this topic see Janet Lansbury’s post

This post has been edited for use on a public blog.

My summer ‘camps’

dee — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:55:45 +0000

As an art teacher I’m always being approached for art camps and classes for children. I ran art summer camps here at my home for a few years before baba no. 3 and they were quite popular. So this year I return to the madness and exciting chaos that is the world of summer camps.

This year I am starting a little camp specially for pre-school children. I am running it in conjunction with the local music school, ‘Music in the Glen’ which is run by Diane Daly, a musician from the Irish chamber orchestra.

(Click the image to see the flyer full screen.)

finding my feet

dee — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:28:36 +0000

The sun was splitting the rocks this past weekend and judging by the radio, the enitre country was in their garden engaging in the great Irish tradition of attempting to turn a nice shade of beetroot as soon as the sun comes out!

Well, on Saturday I was not with them, but I was as happy as a clam to be just getting the odd glimpse of the lovely sunshine. Partly because us redheads are not really able for the heat, and partly because I was meeting up with fellow childminders to discuss our thoughts and ideas on childminding. I really enjoy the opportunity to meet with fellow childminders that I am afforded by being part of childminding Ireland, its great to meet up with others who are also racking their brains coming up with activities, menu’s and outings, makes me feel a little less crazy!

After hearing from the other childminders on their ideas and what they do in services, I always return home refreshed and full of ideas to try!

This evening the school age children here will be planting some herbs(donated by a friend in Dublin) and starting their nature diaries (idea came to me during Siolta training!)

And of course…I’ll keep you ‘posted!’