Shape and colour hunt!

This week, the children have had so much fun collecting and displaying different objects around our nursery for our ‘shape hunt’. They enjoyed investigating different rooms in the nursery, getting really creative finding different shapes in a variety of forms!

“I have so many rectangles. There’s no more space!”

“Look, we’ve got big ones AND littles ones!”

 

“Look at all my circles. It’s like all the planets in the solar system”

Some children even used their imagination to extend their learning further, and turned their shapes into something completely different!

Other children suggested we went a ‘colour hunt next’ which was really fun! We hunted in different rooms and in the garden and found some really interesting things to sort into our colours.

 

“I’m going to find lots of purple because it’s my favourite colour. It matches my dress!”

“I want to draw my pink things.”

The children loved exploring, collecting and sorting all different shapes and colours throughout the playroom and displaying their findings to their friends. They really engaged their imaginations and creative skills, well done boys and girls!

 

 

 

 

Cart Mill Olympics

We have recently been enjoying incorporating jumps into our obstacle course.  To further develop the skills involved in jumping, we decided to create our own hurdles.   The hurdles were placed at three different heights to allow for differing abilities and levels of confidence. By the end of our game we were all feeling really confident and were attempting to jump the final hurdle.

As we cleared the hurdles we all clapped and cheered each other on.  Sometimes we didn’t manage to clear all of the hurdles, so we worked as a team to build them back up again.   Great team work everyone!

We discussed the importance of taking a run up first to allow us to clear more challenging hurdles. Just look how high we can all jump! Olympics here we come 😄

Making Suncatchers!

The children have been really enjoying learning about the weather whilst in the garden. With the season changing we have seen lots of different weather recently! We decided to make suncatchers and hoped this would bring the sunshine back! Instead of just using coloured paper, we wanted to add some natural materials.  We went on a walk to collect pretty blossom that had fallen off the trees and any other materials we could find!

“I’ve found some pink blossom and white!”

We used sticky clear paper to stick all our flowers and coloured tissue paper to. We then folded it over and it stuck the edges together!

“I want yellow paper like the sun!”

“Ah, it’s so sticky my fingers are all stuck!”

We cut them into a nice shapes and then used all our strength to punch a hole in the suncatchers using the hole punch.

“Look, I got it, I’m so strong!”

Finally we threaded some ribbon through the hole and hung them up in the garden!  The children had great fun making these whilst developing their gross and fine motor skills.

“They look so pretty!”

Now we are just waiting for the sun to come back to see what lovely colours and shapes our suncatchers make dancing in the sun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun time, Junk time 😊

Today in the Studio the children were inspired to be creative by some giant boxes kindly donated by one of our parents.

They decided to build a house complete with a back and front garden and even a chimney. The children worked well together planning how their house should look.


There was a lot of chat about what everyone had in their house and what they could use in the centre to replicate the items. Some of their ideas included;
“ look I have made the key to get into the house, I used a cotton bud and tissue paper” “I think I will make a table to have my dinner at” “ I think there should be two doors at the front “ “ The garden should have rainbow grass” “I’m going to make the grass with different colours of tissue paper” “ I want to make  a dinosaur room for my stegosaurus”  I think it’s snowing at our house” I have made a barricade to keep everyone in the back garden”
What wonderful, imaginative suggestions!

The children used team work and exercised their gross motor skills to move the big boxes to where they wanted them and working together, they were able to use their problem solving skills to keep the roof up.” Let’s put these supports into stop it falling down”  

The children loved using their imagination to make their house and spent many hours playing in it.  Great team work everybody, well done!

Happy Campers ⛺️

Today, the children were talking about camping in tents and shared their some of their own experiences together in a small group.

”I have been camping”

”I have a tent in my living room”

“ I would like to go camping “

We decided to bring the outdoors in to the discovery room and build our own tent in our block area.  We shared our thoughts on how we could create this and what resources we would need to collect.

Some suggestions of what we could make or need for our camping experience were – ”a roof ”, “a camp fire”,  “torches”, sleeping bag” and of course “ food”

The children  gathered a variety of resources and began to build the tent using and exercising their gross motor skills. They communicated well and helped one another when building their tent. During this time they were able to problem solve together when they had to think and decide “how will the roof stay on ?” The children had some great ideas – “we could use cellotape”  “string” “blocks” and “pegs” . We decided the pegs and blocks worked the best .

Finally the tent was complete and the children were excited to get inside and begin to make a campfire using some sticks, stones and tissue paper. The children used their imaginations creating a variety of scenarios they have tried before such as toasting marshmallows, fishing, playing mummy’s and daddy’s and Going on a Bear Hunt.

” It’s sleepover time”

”I have made real life marshmallows on a fire ”🔥

”Fire is burny”

Later,  I was invited into the tent join the children and read one of our favourite stories – The Tiger Who Came to Tea before we snuggled down cosy for our sleep in our tent! ⛺️ Goodnight campers! See you in the morning!⛺️

Our Maze Adventure

Today in the Discovery room we have been busy learning about ‘what is a maze?’

We had a think about it and decided we should write down what we thought it was. 🤔 Here are some of our mind mapping ideas-

“It is round and you find your way out.”

”A maze is something you go in to.”

“You have to get in one way and another way out.”

The first thing we decided to do was look at different types of mazes and have a go trying to solve them out using our fingers to work our way around them and then we tried to follow it using our pens .

“These can be tricky!”

“Watch out for those dead ends!”


“My bee  is going to get the  flower”

We had so much fun exploring our mazes that we decided to create one for our Bee Bots, using our wooden blocks in a pattern.

First we created a route by using the wooden blocks to mark out the path. We used all our problem solving skills to identify and remove the blocks that wouldn’t work with our route until our maze was complete – not forgetting to add in some dead ends to make it a bit more tricky!

We placed the Bee Bots on the green circle that symbolised green is for go and start. The children pressed up, down, left, right buttons while counting the number of times the Bee Bot moved to direct him all the way through the maze.

The children had lots of fun and were developing their navigation, co-ordination, problem solving skills, social skills by taking turns and working as part of a team, following and giving instructions and developing their language skills by suggesting ideas and supporting each other. They also showed their ICT programming skills by programming the bee-bots to follow the route round their maze.

Why not give it a go at home, you can draw or make one and if you are lucky enough to have a remote control toy, you could see if it can get through the maze. We hope you have an a-mazing time!😊

Sunflower seeds

Here at Cart Mill we were very lucky to have received our good to grow package from Morrison’s, thank you to all the parents who supported us with this.

After having a look at the seeds the children asked to plant  the sunflower seeds.

We read about  the life cycle of a sunflower then  gathered together our plant pots, soil, trowels and seeds then set to work.

“we need to leave room for the seed”

”the seed got stripes”

After carefully planting our seeds we filled our watering can to give the seeds a drink before we very carefully carried them to the greenhouse.

“seeds need water and  sun to grow”

We are so lucky to have received a donation of sunflower seeds from Barrhead Garden Tidy team.  The team worked hard to harvest seeds from their own sunflowers which they have carefully packaged with sowing instructions on them.

We have used our excellent mark making skills to create some planting instructions and a lovely Sunflower display at our front door.  Please feel free to take a packet of seeds.


We would love you to share your photos of your sunflowers growing with us.  Why not ask the children to measure them and we can have  a competition to see who’s sunflower grows the tallest!

 

What is a scientist?

Today we have been learning about and  discussing scientists.

In our science area  during a group discussion we used a mind map to  record what we already know  and knowledge we could share with each other.

Here are some or our thoughts……

“ A scientist looks at things with a magnifying glass “

”They make explosions ”

”They investigate things”

We looked at things  as scientist might wear and why. Some of us tried dressing up as one.

“They wear coats so they don’t get messy from mixtures and gloves and goggles to keep their hands and eyes safe”.

We  looked at some of the equipment that a scientist might use with their experiments. We looked at magnifying glasses and microscopes and we learned that they help to make things bigger and  easier to look at. At first we found it a little bit tricky as we has to focus the lens but we soon got the hang of it and had fun exploring and looking more  closely in our Discovery area.

 

We took time to look at and read through a popular book we have in nursery. It is called ‘Ada Twist Scientist’. This book tells the story of a girl who has lots of questions and always wonders how things work and why. We watched her story on our Promethium board to help tell us more about how  Ada  the scientist  investigates things.

Do you have questions about how things work? Or what new things can you discover together at home?

 

 

Planting and growing 🌱

Today in our lovely sunny garden we were super busy planting our potatoes. We had previously left our potatoes in our greenhouse in the sun to chit, so we looked to see if our potatoes were ready to be planted, they were so we got started. The children used their gross motor skills for digging, carrying and lifting the soil over to where we are growing our potatoes, they then placed them into the black bag and covered them in soil again.

The children will be taking responsibility for the care of our vegetables in Cart Mill’s garden and that we will need to make sure we are watering them regularly, especially when the weather is sunny. We discussed what things we needed to do to look after our vegetables and also that we will need to be patient while waiting for them to grow.

Easter Fun at Cart Mill!

It’s been such a busy week at Cart Mill.  We are so looking forward to our holiday weekend! What better way to end the week than having a fun day!

First of all we decided to have an Easter Egg hunt to make sure everyone has had an egg to take home.  The eggs were tricky to find, but with a bit of teamwork and encouraging each other, we managed to find them all!

Next it was time to practice our directions and positional language on our bikes! We were able to go forwards and backwards, stop and start,  fast and slow, and race each other round our track.  We drew our own arrows and reminded each other to follow them so that we didn’t  have any crashes!

We created our own obstacle course and carried out our  own risk assessments to decide how many crates we would feel safe to jump from.

Then it was time to see who could roll the cable reels the furthest!
We were exhausted after using up all of our energy outside so it was time for some Peter Rabbit  and some popcorn and fruit for snack.

Have a lovely holiday weekend everyone.  We look forward to welcoming you back when we reopen on Tuesday.