Gillie L

About Me

YOU WORK HARD TO LOOK AFTER YOUR CHILDREN……………..SO DO I ............


Hi there, my name is Gill/Gillie the children seem to prefer to call me Gillie, so either is cool.

A bit about me. I live with my husband Martin we've been together for 14 years and married for 24 months. My Grandson couldn't quiet say Grandad and started calling Martin Grumbles! He's not grumpy at all far from it he's actually the fun guy whom I have to rein in now and again as he'll get them all excited then leave me to cope with hyped up children that are totally buzzing!

We also have my 94 year old Mum that lives with us. In her day she ran a nursery for little people so is familiar to having small people around her. She's very spritely and has lots of fun with the children, she says they keep her on her toes! The children refer to her as Nana, and we often find that they have gone to her room and that they are snuggled up listening to a story being read to them.

I have three children, Kieran aged 33, Katie aged 31, one grandson aged 5 and Zack aged 23 all have now flown the nest and putting their own mark on the world.

I have been child minding now for 32 years, and have learnt to adapt to many changes over the years. Things are always being revised.

I have always worked together with another childminder from my home over the years including my daughter. She sadly has now moved away to North Devon with my Grandson and her partner of ten years so was unable to continue working with me.
So after talking to our parents we made the decision to keep the continuity of care going with our current children (we couldn't bare to give notice to any off them) I now have Ofsted's approval to work with Martin as my assistant. This made sense on all levels as he had just been made redundant.
As the children have grown up around Martin over the years they have made a bond and always looked forward to him coming in. We have now been working together for the past 20 months.
It's a very warm and loving atmosphere here, giving a definite home from home environment. It also has a huge advantage of having a male around as he can climb up the apparatus in the parks with them whilst I watch with a beady eye from the ground.

Martin has been DBS approved and also taken his Safeguarding level 2 and holds a current valid first aid certificate. Working together enables us to offer our parents continuity of care to all our children while also offering more flexibility too. This is a great advantage to parents as it means we can easily look after families with siblings. It also means that you get two child minders for the price of one!!!! We open 46 weeks of the year.

We live in a quiet cul-de-sac and have a large spacious ground floor area, which the children have full access to.
The kitchen is used for messy play ie: painting, play dough (home made) sticking, gluing and colouring etc..
We have a wide range of educational and stimulating toys, books etc... The toys are kept in boxes and are rotated daily according to the ages that we are caring for that day. There’s an area for reading and for the children to sit and snuggle or just sit to have quiet time if they so wish.

My garden is fairly large and at the bottom of the garden I have an area which has playground safety mats where the children can play. There's a slide, see-saw, sand pit, various bikes, scooters, dolls prams/push chairs, water play and a mud kitchen play area…. If the weathers nice in the summer I also get the paddling pool and water spray pool out!

We like to take the children out for picnic’s, walks in the woods, to various ponds to feed the ducks, animal parks, cinema trips as there’s two of us it makes this possible as we can split numbers according to the activity. All of which is caught on our camera's, so you won’t miss a thing.

There are many advantages of having a child minder as it becomes home from home for them. This is important especially for the younger ones. Over the years we have looked after many children youngest being 6 weeks old. Most have stayed with me for many years, until such time that a house move or school re-location intervenes. This is obviously a sad time for us, as after many years of seeing them develop and grow we then have to say goodbye but stay in touch. We feel exceptionally very lucky to have been able to contribute and share all the their life's special moments, being able to help them grow and develop into their own little personalities, which leaves us with all the fond memories of their valuable time spent with us.

Children need to feel relaxed and confident, so you can do your job effectively. We feel confident that this is achieved 100%. We have an open-door policy so if you have any worries we're here to help at any time.

I have Level 3 in childcare, along with other certificates for Behavior Management, Food Safety, Safeguarding, and First Aid. We follow the EYFS requirements, and I am a member of Pacey.
We take EYE Funding, if you would like any further information please contact me and I will hopefully be able to help you.
Kind Regards
Gillie and Grumbles