Celebrating Robert Burns šŸ“󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁓ó æ

Today the children celebrated Burnsā€™ 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; Coulterā€™s Candy, 3 Craws sat upon a Waā€™ 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.

ā€We need glueā€
ā€and Cellotapeā€
“and of course, junk!”

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

ā€œYou need to leave the glue to dry so it sticksā€


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

ā€œpaint it yellow like a bumble beeā€

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

The yellow paint didnā€™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!