Finally, please do make a note of our Easter Holiday session on Friday 17th April, we're trying out a new longer session with no less than twelve activities planned. It will certainly justify a few Easter eggs and hot cross buns for energy.                                                                                                               Dawn & Gill

Wednesday 9:45 – 10:45 & 11:00 – 12:00
Friday 9:45 – 10:45

This half-term will cost £19.25 (5 weeks) or £38.50 (11 weeks, includes a free week). Due to an increase in hall hire charges, the weekly session rate is now £3.85, our first increase since we started. We’re coming up to holiday season, so if you’ve booked a break let us know before you pay for a discount, we are unable to give refunds retrospectively. Our Friday afternoon session has been suspended for the summer months.

Tiny Splodgers (@ 9 months – 18 months)

Friday 11:00 – 12:00

Sessions cost £2, payable on the day. Tiny Splodgers sessions are loosely based on our regular sessions but the activities are all at ground level and have been tweaked to make sure they are safe and appropriate for older babies and younger toddlers. 

Remember- no Tiny Splodger Sessions on Friday 10th and 17th April as it's the Easter holidays for Derbyshire schools.
 

Our activities include:

Purple sand, lucky horseshoe, poorly person, door hanger, jelly, toothbrush painting, collage, crumpet pizzas, pasta, toothpaste, clay, soapflakes, coat hanger mobile, rice, rubbery dubbery dough, robot finger puppet, card weaving, hay, Magic maize, horse world, rubbing plates, rice pudding, pastry, x-ray drawings, doctors hat

..… as well as the usual painting, art and messy play activities!  Phew!
 

Please can we have warm water for hand washing?
We know this has been a problem with the cold winter. The hot water system at the Fleet Arts is very slow, it takes minutes to fill a bowl with warm water proving tricky when we have a queue of children with mucky hands. However, we are trialling a system whereby we fill a bucket with hot water before and during the session so that we can add a jug of this to the cold to take the edge of the chill.
Sometimes I don’t always understand how an activity fits within a theme.
We plan the themes and activities at Splodgers half termly. There are some weeks where the activities fit the theme brilliantly but it’s difficult to get every activity within the theme, even with the most tenuous links! As well as the themed activities, we place great importance on experiences, so over the half term we will try to make sure that there’s opportunity to play with things like sand or water in different ways. We also try to ensure a breadth of materials, equipment and skills. So we vary artistic materials like the paints to include ready made, powdered, blocks and stamps; dough to include a wide range of sticky, dry and textured doughs; and the crafty bits to include glue sticks, pva and tape and finally equipment such as cutters, rollers, stampers, role play items and scissors.
I feel sometimes that the crafty table uses very similar materials.
We do occasionally use ready made kits if we feel that it’s a good activity for the children. We have generally found that children prefer making their craft from more everyday items, for example using pegs and card to make a stand up animal or a paper bag for a puppet. This also allows children more opportunity to use different materials and practice their skills. Whilst we provide instructions and an example for the craft to follow, our philosophy is that children will often have a different (often better!) idea of what they what to make and providing a range of materials and equipment rather than a ready made kit helps them to develop this artistic and creative independence.