Officrèche Blog

EXPLORING space is amazing. Preschoolers have enjoyed in Officréche’s Yellow Room have built a rocket as they learn about space, writes Sarah Booker Lewis. My three-year-old is very excited by the whole project. We have talked about men going to the moon on a big rocket called Saturn 5. With foil mini rockets on the […]

Going from place to place must be a magical experience for babies and young children, writes Sarah Booker Lewis. When they’re babies they fall asleep in a pram or sling in one place and wake up somewhere else. As they grow up the wealth of different transport options is a thrill. “Look a bus!” “The […]

Babies and children in all the rooms at Officréche love playing with play dough. They squish it, bash it, shape it and create with it. The team of early years practitioners always make it a bit more interesting than commercially available doughs, and it is simple to make. Extra texture by adding rice, visual stimlation […]

What a bright and loud series of thunderstorms we’ve experienced during the last couple of weeks, writes Sarah Booker Lewis. My husband and I have taken it as a learning opportunity for our curious almost three-year-old, so she doesn’t feel fearful about loud noises, flashes and bangs. When a storm hits, looking out for flashes […]

  Clinical psychologist Dr Gemima Fitzgerald specialises in resilience and spoke on the subject at TEDx, Brighton. A mother of two, she shares her thoughts on understanding children’s emotions and helping them to grow into happy, balanced adults. On the whole, children are naturally optimistic. However, during childhood, around the age of seven, an explanatory […]

  Children love to explore and ask comments about the natural world – particularly discussing how things grow, change and decay. Planting encourages children to explore and learn through their senses and also helps them to understand where food actually comes from. Some children genuinely believe that food comes from Tesco – imagine their delight […]

Teaching the alphabet can seem a daunting task for any parent/ carer or teacher, there are well known tricks of the trade to get those 26 letters into your little ones brains easily and quicker than you’d think possible.

Counting is as easy as 1,2,3 – learning numbers doesn’t have to be a chore, make it fun and your little people will be more likely to pick them up sooner. We started with numbers when our little one was a few months old. There’s no set age to start, integrate numbers into your stories […]