Exploring shapes

Maths week in the toddlers has been great fun! We have been super busy. Today we focused on shapes.

The children were exploring common 2D shapes on the geoboard. They were able to confidently name the shapes and use their fine manipulative and problem solving skills to put the elastic bands around the nails to create their shapes.

The children had lots of fun learning and creating shapes. We decided to get creative and use shapes for printing!

From an early age, children notice different shapes, even if they don’t yet know that the shapes have names. Giving children lots of practice with shapes helps them solidify their understanding of the two-dimensional structures. That knowledge of shapes gives the young children an advantage in many areas of learning.

Fun with shapes

Today in the garden we had great fun identifying and creating shapes to celebrate Maths Week Scotland.

The children collected various loose parts such as blocks, large and small planks, tyres and crates and used them to explore the properties of different 2D shapes.

We then worked brilliantly as a team putting our knowledge into practice as we made our very own large shapes!

“Our square has 4 corners! “

”A triangle has 3 sides!”

Can you be shape detectives and find any 2D shapes around your house?

Maths Week Scotland in the Discovery

This week is Maths Week Scotland. The children in the Discovery room are showing off their number recognition skills.

“We can match the pebbles with the numbers”


They decided to use our loose parts box to match the parts with the numbers eg. “It’s number 7, we can use 7 pebbles”

”what about sea shells, 1,2…6,7”

Loose parts are not just shells and pebbles, they are open ended resources meaning they can be used for anything, counting, sorting, making patterns, transient art. The list goes on.


The children then decided to sort the numbers in order from 1-9, they worked together to swap them round until in the right order.

“Put the 5 next to 4 and 7”

”Number 3 is upside down”

Volcano o’clock

Some of the children in the home room today were asking questions about the “volcano on the TV” which has sadly been on the news. We talked about what a volcano is and what happens when it erupts! We decided to experiment and make  our very own exploding volcano using a mixture of household objects to see what would happen!! We used clay, vinegar and bicarbonate of Soda with a water bottle. Ready… steady… blast off!! “The flames are very red like on the TV!” We also used a range of media such as  the iPad to research different volcanos from all around the world and see what the flames looked like. Maybe the children could look for some books at home about volcanos? Or other natural disasters? It could make for some interesting discussions! Let us know what you find. Good luck everyone 🙂

Cars and ramps


Today the children have  been super busy making ramps for their cars using the blocks. They decided to make their own ramps. The toddlers self selected their own paint colours and then dipped their cars into the paint and set them off down the ramp. The children noticed that some of the cars went further than others, some went down fast, some slow and that the tyres all made different marks.  They added some textured balls to see what different marks they left. “ That’s left a bumpy mark”  They learned some new concepts including stop, go, up, down, fast, slow developing their language skills and learning about cause and effect.

When asked what they would like to do next with the cars L said “ make a garage “ So they set about creating one. H said “we should use these boxes”. L said “ I’m painting it green, it needs to have a tunnel and space for the fire engine”. The children demonstrated great team work when planning together to create their garage. They were proud of their finished result and had great fun playing together.

It’s Autumn !!!

The children in the studio are noticing the change in the weather. “There are lots of leaves on the ground”. We decided to look at some leaves and see if we could find them on our leaf ID Dial. The children pointed out the different sizes, colours and shapes of the leaves. This helps us discover the name of the tree that  the leaf came from. We then read a story about autumn time and the change this makes to our trees. “We like to kick the leaves in the park”

We then had some fun drawing and tracing the leaves some of the leaves were “bumpy” to draw over. The children chose autumn colours of pencils and crayons to make their 🍁 look real.  The children decided to hang the leaves from the white board so they could copy and draw round the shape of the leaf.

We have enjoyed learning about leaves today and, if you are out and about during autumn, we would welcome any leaves, pine cones and conkers that you find so we can use them for art work in our studio. Thank you.

Playdough Experts!

In the home room the children have been particularly enjoying using the playdough in different ways.


They have been following our playdough recipe and are now very confident at making it themselves.

Once the children had made the playdough they used their imagination and turned the playdough into space rockets.

”3..2..1.. blast off”

“My rocket is going to the sky”

What else could we do with our playdough? Well some of the children even decided to open their own sweet shop and sell the best chocolates!

“ Here’s your chocolate, that’s five pounds please “