Our children love to be creative. Look at the wonderful stories they composed. They shared their stories with the adult who wrote down their words. The children then drew beautiful illustrations and wrote their name as the author.
Tag Archives: creativity
Large Scale Painting
by Miss McArthur
Do you have an old sheet lying around?
Do you have some empty spray bottles and/or paintbrushes?
If you do, then this activity might be the one for you!
You can help your child develop their big, gross motor muscles and their small, fine motor skills through painting on a large white sheet.
In this activity, the children were using varying brush sizes to accomplish the “splat” look! They have been developing their gross motor skills through using their shoulders, arms and wrists to splat with the brushes and they challenged each other to see who could splat the furthest.
The children have also been developing their fine motor skills through the use of spray bottles. The children are manipulating the nozzle and using their knowledge of direction to ensure that they spray the sheet.
Did you know?
One of the most important skills developed through art activities is fine motor development. During art experiences, your child’s small muscles in their fingers, hands, and wrists are exercised and strengthened, helping to make learning to write easier!
Ideas to develop your child’s fine and gross motor skills at home:
● Spray bottles with paint or water- your child can spray a sheet to decorate it or spray the flowers to help care for them!
● Paint brushes- a variety of sizes are perfect to develop your child’s fine motor and pincer skills! Helpful hint- larger handles can be useful for younger children i.e. siblings under 3 as they will be able to grip the handle better!
● Chalking outdoors.
● Painting on large areas such as sheets or A3 paper will encourage children to use their bigger muscles in their shoulders and arms.
Painting and creating with your child, not only helps their creative development but it also stimulates their brain. They can also learn about colour mixing and colour recognition through art activities. Painting doesn’t always have to be sitting at the table with a paintbrush and paint, the opportunities are limitless; be creative and offer it to your child in a variety of ways, like large-scale painting, cling film on windows, window paints, and stone painting (to name a few!) Painting opportunities are great for developing your child’s social skills and their communication as they learn new terms, words and phrases and talk aloud about their thoughts and processes. We would love to see some Tweets of the art activities your child has taken part in at home.
Virtual Nature Schools – Water
by Miss Liddell
During our Virtual Nature School journey, we explored the theme of water.
We asked the children to think about places where they might find water. They had lots of great ideas such as in rivers, seas, ponds, “in our taps” and “in bottles.” One child shared:
“When it rains and then I can jump in big puddles!”
The children then decided they wanted to play outside in the puddles and explore the water. However, we had one BIG problem…it wasn’t raining! Somebody suggested:
“We could do a rain dance and make it rain!”
This led to a whole range of creative learning experiences. We watched videos of Native Americans doing a rain dance, we made headdresses and we explored and played musical instruments.
The children were disappointed when their rain dance did not work so we discussed the water cycle to understand how rain is made.
We learned lots of new vocabulary such as evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection.
We also did some fun experiments to see how the water cycle worked.
Small World Play
by Mrs Cramb
Small world play is when children use figures and resources in miniature to build stories and play imaginatively. Your small world could represent a real-life place like a farm, zoo, nursery, home or it might be a completely imaginary world.
Small world play offers a fantastic opportunity to grow a child’s imagination and is also an outlet for their emotions. Children can do everything from acting out routines or recalling past events, to building their own unique stories.
When observing the children, l noticed that they were using their imagination to pretend that they were superheroes. I asked the children if they would like to create their own superhero small world. They decided they wanted to create a small world for some of our superhero peg people. The children selected an empty box from the junk modelling and recycled it into an amazing building for our superheroes to explore.
The children chose the colours to paint their box and used different patterned rollers, which gave the outside of their box some texture. They added some small stones, twigs, logs and leaves. Once it was finished and dry, the children were ready to explore their building with their superheroes.
Creating small worlds helps your child to develop their language skills, imagination, curiosity and friendships, as well as allowing their confidence to grow. It also allows the child to think and ask questions about the different environments that we live in and the ones that they want to create.
There are many benefits of children making and exploring small worlds so please join in at home and allow your child to take the lead, while you support them in creating at their own wonderful world to explore. You could create your own characters using wooden clothes pegs, wooden lollipop sticks or even use the children’s own toys like safari animals, farm animals or dinosaurs. Anything goes, it’s your small world!
Virtual Nature Schools
by Miss Chrystal
We have recently introduced the Virtual Nature School program within our centre. This term, we have been using natural resources to develop speech and language skills through a range of activities, all led by the children’s interests.
The children have developed their communication skills through a variety of different water and mud play experiences. This has enabled the children to explore new vocabulary, talk about their ideas and think about how things change within the natural environment.
Water
The children have been exploring the different ways that we can experiment with water and colour change. We made our own clouds and rain using shaving foam and food colouring.
The children became confident at using a range of resources such as pipettes and paintbrushes. They were able to describe the change of state when the ice melted and also describe the colour changes that took place in the water.
We also explored different pictures of water experiences and the children discussed of what they associate each picture with:
Mud
The second element we explored was mud. The children led their own learning within this block with staff observing the children’s play. We were fortunate that it rained so we put on our wellies and waterproofs and went to play in the mud.
The children were engrossed in their play. They used their imaginations and they were confident to express their ideas and interests. They created their own mud paint as well as using paper to create muddy footprints from their wellies.
The children developed their confidence by talking and exploring a variety of vocabulary when asked to describe the texture of the mud.
“It is squelchy!”
“The rain has made it all gooey and sticky!”
Terrific Triangles
Working with Starcatchers, we developed a creative project on triangles. Children and parents brought lots of lovely triangles from home (thank you).
Child: “The triangles are all different sizes. Oh, Look at them, they are all my favourite. I made some at home, here they are.”
Then …….
…we made more at Glenwood using lots of different materials to decorate.
…we cut slots into our triangles. We tried scissors and then saws.
…we found we could make 3D shapes by connecting them together and we could make lots of different shapes.
…we took some outside and made a traffic jam with lots of cars.
…we were thinking about our community and neighbours and being ‘intergenerational’. So we made some into bunting and delivered it to our friends with a card. We wrote:
“We are thinking of you and hope our triangles make you happy”.
Parent: “I really liked the idea of the triangles and having something to work with my child at home and bring in. It made me feel more connected to the nursery at this time when we can’t come in”.
Remote Learning – Rocks Rock!
Do you have stones or rocks in your garden?
Can you go on your daily walk and find some?
If the answer is yes, then here are some ideas from Miss McArthur you can try out!
Rock Painting
Choose your favourite colours and paint away… this will help:
- Develop creativity – it doesn’t matter if the picture doesn’t look like anything to you, to your child it’s a masterpiece.
- Express their feelings and thoughts without words – sometimes paintings tell a story.
- Develop problem solving and motor skills – as they figure out how to manipulate the rock and painting tools.
Rock paintings will help brighten up your garden or make an indoor play area. Why not try:
- Painting small world animals or fairies.
- Creating a fairy or elf door,
- Painting minibeasts.
- Create your own number or letter hunt around the house or in your garden.
Use rocks and stones as loose parts
What shapes can you turn them into?
How many have you collected?
Can you make a stepped number line from them? 
Can you build a tower out of them?
Miss McArthur can build a tower of 5.
Is your tower bigger or smaller?
Remember to Tweet to let us see what you used your rocks for! @GlenwoodFC #Glenwoodlearningathome
Remote Learning – Upcycling Challenge: Create Your Own Game
Mrs Silvester has set you a challenge! Can you create your own dice game at home?
Remember to share your ideas by tweeting @GlenwoodFC #Glenwoodlearningathome
Here are a few ideas to get you started…
The lids from milk jugs have been used to make these little Plastic Lid Ladybirds for a number dice game. To make the ladybird draw or use some button type eyes and pen dots on your lids. To Play the game, roll the dice and match the spots or numbers on the ladybird number lids to the dice.
What are dice good for?
Dice are great for introducing turn taking and encouraging early maths skills such as: counting, matching, comparing and number recognition.
Find some more number games on the CBeebies website by clicking the link below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/joinin/numberblocks-help-your-child-with-maths
Clay
We recently introduced the children to using clay and we have a lovely clay working area.
Designing our new nursery
We are very excited about the building work going on for our new nursery. We have been looking at the plans and created our own 3D model of our new centre.
