A day in the life of Little G

“What would you like to do today?”

This is something I ask every day. I am a great believer in learning through play. Before I was a stay at home mum I was a Reception teacher. My days were centered around play and I loved it! The only difference between then and now is I have one child to play with instead of 30.

Little G wakes up at 7am without fail every morning. We go downstairs after her ‘getting up wee’ and I ask her what she would like for breakfast. More often than not she asks for porridge. It has been a firm favourite since she was a baby. Sometimes she will choose Weetabix to be like me, but not often.

Today has been so sunny I flung open all of the windows and doors. I love days like these, we are very lucky to have a garden and we use it as much as we can.

So, what did we do today?

A few pictures later we painted the seaside. She then decided we should go on a train ride to the beach so off we went inside to build a train!Little G wanted to do painting in the garden. She has an easel and so we took it outside and she chose which colours she wanted to squeeze into the pots. She began to paint lovely swirly pictures and then asked if I could help her. She told me what to paint and I asked her which colours I should use. She was very specific in her instructions. “The wiggly worm needs a smiley mouth, a hat and some shoes” I said she needed a necklace too and she liked that idea.

We moved all of the dining chairs into the living room to build the train. She decided she was to be the driver, so her chair (with her booster seat) went at the front. I asked her what else we might need, I asked whether she remembered what we did when we went to London last week. She remembered we had bought tickets so we made our own- Mummy ticket, Daddy ticket, Child ticket and Baby ticket. Baby L was asleep at this point but she decided she might like to join us later.

As we were chug chugging along I said I was hungry so she hopped down and brought me some tea and cake on a tray. She also offered lemonade to the dollies that were riding with us :). As each dolly and I gave her money for the food and drink she remembered to give us our change.

Once we arrived at ‘the park’ I asked what she would like to do next and she said “crafts please”. I have no inspiration when it comes to these sorts of things so I said let’s look on Cbeebies for something Mr Maker has made. My mum gave her a tablet for her birthday so she found the site (Computers didn’t even exist when I was two!!!) She chose a nice ant to make and we set about finding the bits and pieces we needed. She enjoyed painting the body and chose some nice jewels to decorate his body.

After we finished making the ant we went off into the garden again to do some more painting. We had fun mixing colours to see what new colours we could make. She got a little annoyed that we had run out of white paint and couldn’t make pink! Baby L was with us by this point, happily sitting in her Bumbo. Suddenly Little G remembered Baby L hadn’t been on the train so off we went to have another ride. She threw a complete tantrum the fact I had tidied the chairs away. I explained she had chosen to finish that earlier and needed to calm down. After a while (and a lot of patience on my part I can tell you!) she calmed down and decided cushions would be better than chairs anyway as Baby L isn’t able to sit up on a chair yet.

My mum and sister arrived at this point and so play came to a halt while she received sweeties and magazines- Friday is treat day in our house. I had to restrict it as my family have no self control and want to spoil her all of the time!

After they had gone she busied herself making things out of the magazine while I made Chilli con Carne for dinner.

After dinner is always winding down time, she tells her Daddy what she has done all day and then it is time for pyjamas and some toast before bed (she has to eat before bed as she has toddler hypoglycemia). Bedtime is at 7pm and she chooses a story for Mummy or Daddy to read. Once we have read it she then likes to read it back to us which I think is so cute.

I obviously don’t think about this on a normal day but this is what areas were covered today:

Main area:
Expressive arts and design- Exploring and using media and materials, Being imaginative.

Additional areas:
Communication and language- speaking (plus listening and understanding)
Physical development- movement and handling, health and self care (toilet training)
Personal, Social and Emotional Development- Making relationships, managing feelings and behaviour
Literacy- reading and writing
Mathematics- Shape, space and measure (money)
Understanding of the world – Technology

You can download the EYFS handbook with more information on the areas here. These are the guidelines followed by early years practitioners in the UK.

As you can see, lots of play = lots of learning. It was a fun day and I am looking forward to seeing what we end up doing tomorrow.