Monthly Archives: May 2022

Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Special Event

Buckingham Palace comes to Cart mill!

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The children have been very excited this week learning all about the Queen and her upcoming Platinum Jubilee. In the garden they worked together using the big building blocks to build Buckingham Palace or “the Queens house” as the children liked to call it!

We added cylinders to our Palace to make turrets and the children wanted a ramp at the front to slide out.


The blue blanket was used to create water in front of the Palace and other blankets to make a bridge at the side!

”The bridge is a shaky bridge to keep people out!”

”No one can get to our Queen across the water!”

The coloured material was used by the children to dress up as the Queen in her Palace. They had great fun roleplaying all different scenarios pretending to be royalty.

The children decided the Palace needed a flag so we painted some cardboard in red and blue to create a flag!

We taped a cane to our flag and stuck it in the Palace.

The children were very proud of their Palace and flag! They had lots of fun playing in it and it attracted other children to come and play too!  We are all looking forward to continuing our Jubilee theme with our party tomorrow.

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Let’s Make a Nursery Rhyme Basket

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Today in the noisy and quiet room the children decided to make a nursery rhyme basket. First, we went on a prop hunt and filled our basket up with all the nursery rhymes props we could find. We found quite a lot of small toys that we could use which related to nursery rhymes. We had lots of fun looking for, and putting together our nursery rhyme basket.

“ I found a bus”

“I found a fish and a star”                      “ Look I found a mouse”

” I found a spider”

It was a great way to get everyone involved and we had lots of fun on our rhyme hunt. Well done every one good job ! 👍

We then sat down to explore our basket whilst singing our song “ what’s inside our basket, our basket, will ( name of child) like to have a look.”
The children took it in turns picking out their favourite nursery  rhyme props  whilst singing the rhyme and doing the actions within the group.


The children used the experience to enhance their language as they recited their favourite nursery rhymes, it was a great activity for children learning English as an additional language too. By using the props, it really bought the songs to life and helped develop further skills, such as recognising and naming objects and simple story sequencing. The children developed their social skills by demonstrating the need to take turns and shared their songs with others in the group. The children also developed their fine motor skills by moving their fingers and hands.

Why not make a nursery rhymes basket at home, see what you can find around your home that matches with nursery rhymes and let us know how you get on!😊

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Finger gym

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The boys and girls have recently enjoyed developing their fine motor skills by picking up seeds with tweezers to plant their sunflowers so we have decided to create a finger gym area dedicated to outdoor fine motor play. These experiences help to develop the muscles required for handwriting and also helps to develop independence in things such as buttoning jackets.

We started by digging out our log peg boards. Some of these hadn’t been used in a while so we had to assess their safety. We found a few nails were a little wobbly so we very carefully tapped them back in to place. Then we realised we only had three boards and four children wanted to play so we walked around the garden to find another small log and asked our janitor, Michelle, if she had some nails we could use and created a fourth peg board. We used our pincer grip to hold the nail in place then used great hand-eye coordination when using the hammer to make sure we didn’t hit our fingers.

We then enjoyed using our fine motor skills to wrap elastic bands around the nails to create some lovely artworks. Just look at our wonderful designs…

Snack

Fruity fun in the baking area 🍓

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Everyday the children enjoy helping to make their own snack.  Which usually consists of seasonal fruits and vegetables. Preparing snack offers children the chance to develop their fine motor skills through chopping and slicing, make choices, gain an awareness of healthy eating and be able to express their likes and dislikes.
Today some of the children found some blueberries in the fridge and asked if they could make something else with them? We looked at different recipes and found one for blueberry muffins! We decided that this would be fun to try.


First we talked about what ingredients we would need.

Then we got to work making our yummy muffins. We followed the recipe, adding flour. One child commented “ I bake lots with granny, I know that is flour” Next thing to do was mix the oil into the mixture, followed by some soya milk and of course we had to add the most important ingredient, some blueberries. The mixture needed a lot of mixing and our arms got quite tired but we took it in turns so everyone could get a rest!
Next we used our mathematical skills to divide the mixture up between our paper cake cases before taking them to the oven. The hardest part was waiting until they came out because we could smell the delicious baking scent. Finally, they were ready and they looked amazing!

Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Welcome to our mud cafe

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Today in our garden we have had lots of fun transforming our mud kitchen into a mud cafe where the children served up some delicious food!

Firstly the children worked as a team to create their own menu, the children showed great writing skills and fine motor control.

After the menu was complete it was time to open for business! The children picked what they would like to eat from the menu and our lovely ‘waitress’ took their order then off to the kitchen she went.


“I’ll have the ice cream and pasta please”

The children were super creative in the mud kitchen, working together mixing the mud, water and loose parts to make the yummy food.


“I’m making a delicious cake with mud and water”

Now it was time to serve the food!

“Here you go, the spaghetti is ready’

”It’s a little hot, be careful”

The children love spending time outdoors in our mud kitchen. It offers them many benefits such as exploring sensory play, working as a team, using their imagination and of course being outdoors, as well as many more. 

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Technologies

Developing our fine motor skills

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Today the children have been developing their fine motor skills in a variety of ways.

Fine motor skills is the coordination of small muscles in movement with the eyes, hands and fingers.


We played a game called ‘Pickle Pop’ where the children had to use their hand muscles by moving the pickle with their finger to pop the bubbles.

“ I have to move it over there to catch the bubble”


We put shaving foam on the light board and used our hands and  fingers to draw shapes and make patterns. This provides children with the opportunity to strengthen their hand muscles and hand eye coordination.

“ The thread goes  up and down ”

“ I made a line through it”

 

We spent some time at the mark making table where the children drew pictures, copied and continued shape and number patterns.

Expressive Arts

Paper plate creations!

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Today in the Studio we explored our creativity skills.
We decided to use our imagination to transform paper plates into some wonderful colourful creations!

Our journey began when we thought of what we wanted to make- e.g  our favourite animal,  a tv character, a flower.

 

We had a great selection of different resources to choose from to make our creations such as types of paper, pens , pencils and lots of different colours.

We exercised our fine motor skills whilst strengthening our muscles as we cut paper carefully with scissors, used glue pots and glue sticks and stuck them down to our plates.

The children all had some fantastic individual ideas they brought to the Studio. We loved discussing what each other made their plate into and were able to describe and talk about what we did.

”I’m putting lots of spots on my ladybird”

“ I need a snorty nose on mine”

”Minions are my favourite , they are funny”

The children used good hand eye co ordination when using their cutting and sticking skills.

They  children worked  well together. They  understood and displayed good turn taking skills  and were able to demonstrate awareness of others needs.

“This is a bit tricky can you hold this for me ?”

”could someone pass me scissors?

Why not get creating at home – do you have any paper plates ? What ideas or wonderful creations can you make ? We’ d love you to share your creations with us.

 

 

Outdoor Learning

All sorts of measure

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Today in the garden the boys and girls enjoyed exploring measurement through investigating the size, amounts and capacity of various items.


The children used standard and non standard units to measure and compare the height of each other, plants and water.

Some of our children were able to compare size and volume using comparative language such as “tall and taller” and “ full and empty”

“Look at this they’re the same”

Why don’t you see what you can use to measure different items at home?

 

Expressive Arts

Bookbug comes to visit Cart Mill!

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We are so lucky that Bookbug came to visit us at Cart Mill today! We welcomed him with our “Hallo” song.

Next, it was time to choose a puppet from our Bookbug basket! It was so exciting to take our turn and use the puppet we had chosen to guess which song we would sing next.

We waited very patiently until it was our turn to guess the song.

It was so much fun to bounce our puppets on the lycra to see how high they could jump!

Finally it was time to end our Bookbug with one of our favourite stories.  Our story had lots of rhyming words for us to practice!

We love when Bookbug comes to visit!

 

 

Expressive Arts

Sew Much Fun

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In the home room we have created a new sewing area which the children have shown a great interest in. Today we had a discussion on a variety of the resources available and explored these by touching, naming and there purpose. The children could confidently identify lots of things connected with sewing:

“Needles are jaggy”

“scissors can be sharp”

“Wool is nice and soft and squishy”

“thread is hard”

The children were keen to try and thread a needle so with great patience , concentration and hand and eye co-ordination each child had a go. During this time we talked about the whole in the needle is called an eye and when you thread you put a knot at end so the stitch stays in. The older children were able to complete this and were excited to try to do a stitch on the sewing table. They listened well to instructions and were able to follow this with little support. They helped each other when got a bit tangled and commented on each other’s stitches.

“Look at your big one”

“ you have done lots”

The younger children were able to thread the large shaped buttons using laces.

The children were unsure what the wheel, block and trees were for so I demonstrated weaving, encouraging them to take part. All the children enjoyed the weaving and had fun experimenting with the the different coloured wool and objects.

“ it looks like a rainbow”

” I like these trees”

Why not try exploring simple weaving techniques at home using ribbon or paper. This is a great activity for hand and eye co-ordination and a good way for building up fine motor skills.