This months guest blog is from Sam Goldsworthy Childminding, a wonderful mother and daughter team. You can follow them on their adventures at Facebook and Instagram @samgoldsworthychildminding.
As most of you know I am Sam from Sam Goldsworthy Childminding. We are a mum and daughter team who are childminders in Cornwall. Before the pandemic we were looking after many children working 7am – 6pm and also running a brownie group with 30 brownies.
When Boris stated that we all need to close apart from looking after key worker children this is when our life as we knew it changed. We suddenly stopped childminding apart from one day a week and we didn’t have brownies to run either – our whole life changed.
So how did we manage to get through this massive life change? We started going back to basics and looking for the positives in the little things that we had a round us.
We baked more of our favourite bakes (lemon cake, bread , cookies) as well as trying out new recipes such as batternberg cake. lemon curd. We also spend time teaching my 12 year old to cook too. She made pasties from scratch last week they were very yummy!
We played games together as a family as well as making our way through two 1000 piece puzzles. We watched films together and I even taught myself to crochet which has been on my wish list for longer than I can remember.
We spent more time in the garden planting seeds and nurturing them which is something that we never have time usually to do in our busy lifestyle. Last year we planted potatoes and hoped for the best! This year we have all sorts growing from parsnips, carrots to fennel and dwarf beans. It has made me realise that we could become more self sufficient by growing and harvesting our own crops plus it is a great way to involve our little ones when they are back caring for the plants and tasting new foods.
We have also been on our daily walk like the rest of the country. We have been walking around the back lanes to our house which leads through country lanes – we have walked this many times before but not taken in the nature around us – the spring flowers blooming, the wildlife, rabbits and pheasants in the field, the bees collecting the nectar and the birds singing in the trees.
My daughter Isabelle has taken her camera out many times to capture these moments of nature and started scrapbooking the beautiful moments around us that we have been too busy in the past to notice and fully appreciate.
We have even had time to make many items out of old scrap wood including a sandpit, welly rack, spice rack and a butterfly house to name a few! This has taught us how to make the most of what we have rather than spend money. We had a real sense of achievement actually making them ourselves and teaching Isabelle to use the tools. She is now part way through building a bug hotel totally independently which is amazing as well as being a big wow for her self confidence and achievement too.
So all in all we have adapted, we have survived and we have begun to appreciate the little things a lot more as we have the time. We shall definitely not be going back to full ‘normal’ when this is over.