Outdoor Sensory Area

We have decided to create a sensory area in our garden. We made a list of all natural resources that we could collect when on our local walk. We all helped to collect stones, sticks, leaves and pinecones.

“I found a big stone, let’s put it in the bag.”

Once back from our walk we made labels so that we could sort the loose parts into a section each.

The children then had fun working together to match and sort.

“We’re almost finished.”

”We need to collect more stones.”

Our sensory area is beginning to take shape and we have lots of great ideas for different natural resources we could collect to add to it.

Big Garden Birdwatch

This morning the boys and girls have taken part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2022. We started by trying to invite the birds in to the garden. Helen and the children discussed what birds might use to create their nests and filled the whisks with a variety of these items and also some seeds.

“They like fluff.”

We looked at pictures of the most common garden birds and learned the names of them and also some of their features. Then we created a chart to record which birds we saw and how many of each type.

“I like robins.”
“I see blackbirds in my granny’s garden.”

We used the binoculars to look for birds and then marked which ones we saw on the chart.

“I saw two and two blackbirds, that makes four!”

The children even drew pictures of their favourite birds. Look at this lovely starling!


The Big Garden Birdwatch runs from the 28-30th January, you can find more details on the RSPB website. Why not take part and share your findings with us on Twitter. Have a nice weekend 🦜

Keeping fit and having fun!

Today on our walk, the children noticed a number 6 on a car in the car park so we asked them if they could see any more numbers – this seems to be a particular favourite with the children! Making walks fun are a fantastic way to get children out walking. There are so many benefits for children going out on walks.
Walking is very sociable! As we walked, we talked about the numbers we could see and why they were there. The children talked amongst themselves as well as talking to the adults and of course to Blue.

Walking is fun and interesting. The children are discovering new areas in their local community.

Walking makes them feel good. Being out in the outdoors is a great way to relax and escape from the hustle and bustle of a busy learning environment. We were listening out for cars and one child said, all I hear is birds!

Walking promotes independence and choice. When children are walking, they can stop and look at things that interest them, unlike in a car where things fly past unnoticed.

Children can choose when to stop and what to look at. We are all enjoying the benefits of our walks, looking for numbers was just an extra treat!

Bookbug, stories, puppets and fun!

Today Bookbug came to nursery to share some rhymes, stories and songs with the children.

We stretched, pulled and moved the lycra to make our toys bounce up so high in the air! We had lots of fun singing 1,2,3,4,5, Humpty Dumpty and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. We had to be very careful not to let them fall off the Lycra (we’ll need to practice this 😀)

We enjoyed reading the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We had so much fun using puppets to retell the story ourselves.

Bookbug supports the development of children’s language and vocabulary, turn taking, being with our friends and being involved by choosing the songs and story.

It’s always fun when Bookbug comes to nursery!😀

Celebrating Robert Burns 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Today the children celebrated Burns’ Day with a variety of different experiences throughout the centre.

Out in the garden the children made Scotch pancakes cooked on our fire. They enjoyed measuring and mixing the ingredients and watched whilst Fiona cooked them on the fire pit. They demonstrated good listening skills whilst being told about how to keep safe around the fire.

Continuing the Scottish theme, some of the children used their creative skills to design their own tartan using paint and cars. They rolled their car in the paint then onto their paper.

In the Home Room the children asked to make flapjacks. They measured each of the ingredients, developing both numeracy and literacy skills. After mixing them together they used the clock to time how long they took to cook in the oven. They even assisted with cleaning up.

The children in the Discovery Room read a story by Rebecca Colby and Kate McLelland about a wee lassie who swallowed a midgie! They watched a short story on the life of Robert Burns and enjoyed some highland dancing.

The children love to sing at Cartmill and today was no exception. In the Studio they learned some Scottish songs; Coulter’s Candy, 3 Craws sat upon a Wa’ and Pop a little pancake into a pan. They even joined in, playing musical instruments.

All the children enjoyed tasting some haggis, neeps and tatties for snack and tasted some of their flapjacks.

Junk modelling robot

We have been enjoying exploring the junk modelling area since moving in to the Studio room last week. The children discussed what they would like to make and made a plan to make a robot but what would they need, they decided to list all the things they would need.

”We need glue”
”and Cellotape”
“and of course, junk!”

The children used their imagination and problem solving skills to figure out how to make the parts stay together.

“You need to leave the glue to dry so it sticks”


The children worked together as a team making sure they followed their design so that everything was in the right places.

“paint it yellow like a bumble bee”

To finish off they decided to paint it yellow and add some cardboard tubes for arms.

The yellow paint didn’t cover the box as well as we thought, so the children improvised and used yellow tissue paper instead.

We are always looking for cardboard boxes (big and small), bottle lids, cartons, cereal boxes etc. to add to our collection so save your recycling and instead of putting it all in your blue bins, bring it in to us!

Magic Magnets

Today in the discovery room we looked at magnets and how they work.

We decided to select different items we found around our playroom and investigated to see if they were magnetic using a selection of different sized magnets.

We used our mathematical skills to discover that magnets can pull together objects or push them away. We also found that although we had two of the same item, only one was magnetic. This is because objects that look the same are not always made of the same material.

We recorded our findings on a chart. It showed us what items were magnetic and those that were non-magnetic. We discovered that magnetic things were made of metal but items that were made of wood or plastic were not magnetic, unless they had a little bit of metal in them!

We loved listening to each other making our predictions whether something was magnetic or not, everybody made sure they were taking turns when choosing what items to test. We loved guessing the material!

Why don’t you have a look around the house and guess what materials are magnetic or not!

Let’s make Scones

Today in the Home Room we had a look at some recipes and chose to make scones. We gathered up the ingredients, some were in the cupboards and some in the fridge.

We then washed our hands and put our aprons on.

We carefully measured out the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. We checked the numbers on the scales to see when the spoonfuls of flour reached 300g . We talked about the different sizes of spoons as we needed  2 tablespoons of sugar, but only one teaspoon of baking powder. Then we added the oat milk .

Today we added cherries to our scones.  We discussed our safety rules when using a knife and then carefully cut up lots of cherries to add to our mixture.

We developed our fine motor skills by using the rolling pins and cutters to make the scones. We counted out the number of scones we had each made and put them on the oven tray ready to bake.

We took the scones to the oven.  We discussed the oven being very hot and this part has to be done by a adult. Our scones need to be in the  oven for 15 minutes, so let’s check the clock!⏰ Our scones are ready and they look very tasty.

Now it’s tidy up time! We worked together to put our ingredients back in the cupboards and fridge, swept the floor and wiped the table.
We are looking forward to trying out our scone recipe again!

We’re going on a number hunt!!

We’re going on a number hunt, we’re going to find a big one!

Today the children had so much fun going on a number hunt in our local area. We found lots of numbers in some interesting places!

 

We even took little Blue along to help us on our hunt…

 

We put our thinking caps on and thought how could we make our own numbers? We found some big sticks, and some little sticks and made some numbers in the gloopy mud! It was very sticky. We couldn’t go under it… we couldn’t go over it… we had to go through it!!!

“it’s very very squelchy”

”I’m going to write 5 because that’s my number”

“look, it’s a 0 and a 1!”

Well done boys and girls, you were all super detectives on our number hunt!!

I wonder where else we could find some more interesting numbers? Or maybe you could try going on a letter or a shape hunt! Have fun everyone 🤩!!

 

 

Number Games in the Garden!

Today in the garden the children were playing games using chalk, hoops and bean bags! The children helped to number a hop scotch grid using chalk  and then had great fun playing on it.
“I jumped on 2 and 3!”         “I can hop and jump to 10!”

The children were trying to balance bean bags on their heads whilst moving around the garden.

“I can run fast with mine!”          “I’m walking slow with mine!”

The children thought it would be fun to try hop scotch with the bean bags on their heads. They demonstrated really good balance whilst hopping and jumping!

The children thought up a good game to play with the bean bags and hoops! They numbered inside the hoops with chalk and earned points for throwing the bean bags into the hoops! When it got too easy they moved further away from the hoops!

What a great game! We had really good fun in the garden today!