Did you know today was Pancake Friday? Well it was at Cart Mill! We thought it was so nice outside we should have snack out in the garden, but what could we have? Pancakes was the request. So, we decided to get to work mixing the flour, sugar, milk and an egg to make our pancake batter. Once we were all sitting down, we spoke about keeping safe around the fire.
Then it was time to light the fire
We put some butter in the frying pan so the pancake mix wouldn’t stick but we noticed very quickly that the butter had melted in the pan before it had even got near the fire. That made us wonder, what made it melt? After a lot of thought, we realised that the sun had been so hot in the sky, it had melted the butter!
We put the pan on the fire and added our runny pancake mix and we sat and waited. What did we begin to notice? Bubbles! There were little bubbles appearing on top of our pancake mix. We learned that this happens because the heat is cooking the pancake mixture.
Once there were a lot of bubbles it was time to flip our pancakes. Because we were outside at the fire pit, we decided that flipping them in the air might be a bit dangerous so we used a spatula to turn them over. When the first one turned over it was different shades of brown.
“it looks like the world!”
Soon all the pancakes were ready to eat, we put some butter on them and enjoyed them round the fire pit.
Cart Mill’s Pancake Friday was a hit!
Monthly Archives: July 2022
Getting Creative with clay using sea shells 🐚 🐚
Today in the Studio room We have been sharing stories of summer, our holidays together and the fun days we have had with our families at the beach. 🐚 😎 ☀️
We have made sand castles, splashed in the sea, and when digging in the sand or looking in rock pools we have found and made sea shell collections. We looked at some shells we have in our nursery and discussed the different shapes, sizes and colours they were.
“This one’s got a crab in it” 🦀
“It feels smooth”
“This is a big flat one”
“This one is bumpy”
“This one is round and bumpy “🐚
“ we can hear the sea in it”
First we made a round ball shape by rolling the cold sticky clay in our hands. We then pressed it down to make a flat shape before pressing our shells on to the clay to make some beautiful prints and patterns.
We found by pressing the shells into the clay we could make our own fossils!
Creating art with clay and shells gave the children endless ways to get creative and explore different textures through nature.
Clay also stimulates the children’s curiosity and imagination whilst exercising their fine motor skills when rolling, pressing and moulding.
We sat our clay shells aside to dry out before we painted them to make some colourful decorations for our nursery and home gardens.
“ I am going to paint mine blue and white”
“ I want to put on lots of colours on mine”
” I am going to put on lots of glitter on mine”
The children express and developed there creative skills and strengthen there fingers and hands and arm muscles.
What can you make at home using your sea shell collection? Let us know how you can be creative ! 🐚 🐚 🐚
Kandinsky kids
We have been learning about different styles of art while developing our gross motor mark making skills and this morning we have been looking at the work of the artist Kandinsky. We discussed how the circles could have been created and the different colours he used. We noticed each adjacent circle was a different colour. Then we started creating our own using the mini mops and a selection of colours.
“It’s like a rainbow Easter egg!”
“It looks like a tornado. You’re going to get sucked in to it!”
Then we decided to try a different method and use brushes to make smaller circles.
“Look at all my spirals.”
Absolutely amazing pieces of art created and some good messy fun!
Textile Textures
Today the children explored a variety of materials and different textures in the sewing area.
We looked at cellophane,carpet, silk, felt, bubble wrap and hessian. The children were able to describe how these materials felt.
“This is a bit jaggy”
“It is so soft”
“This one is smooth”
“Oh that’s crinkly”
We cut the materials into squares and thought it would be a great idea to make our own texture board. The children chose the materials they wanted to use and were keen to create stitches on them, using good hand and eye co-ordination we were able to put together a selection of materials for our board.
We then displayed our work on the texture board in our sewing area.
The children were very proud of their hard work and the children invited their friends to come have a look and feel the different textures.
Learning to make playdough 👩🏻🍳🧑🏻🍳👩🏼🎨🧑🏾🎨
Playdough is a great experience for lots of different reasons. It’s sensory fun to explore, but it can be about anything you want it to be! Sharing, measuring, fine motor skills, colours, shapes, role playing and so much more. You decide!
The best part about playdough is it is actually super easy to make, with very basic ingredients. You probably have them in your kitchen already.
All you need is;
3 scoops of flour
1 scoop of salt
1 scoop of oil
1 scoop of water
That’s the basic dough recipe in the bowl. It’s time to decide what kind of playdough you would like; colourful, scented, soft? There are different ingredients you can add for different reasons. If you want it very soft, there are some magic ingredients to add before you mix it together: conditioner, shaving foam, cornflour. Or some nice scents like vanilla essence, lemon, orange, mint or lavender are popular favourites from our children at Cart Mill.
Now your dough is ready to mix together. If it all comes together like scone mixture, it’s ready for squishing!
“squish it nice and soft”
”I’m going to squash it like Hulk. “
Being part of the process when making playdough gives a sense of independence to our children, as does helping to clear it all up at the end. Good job everyone, and good luck making your own at home 🤩
🍦🍧😎 Cool Fridays 😎🍧🍦
🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️
After a long hot week we cooled off today with some tasty treats!
We talked together about different ways we cooled ourselves down when the weather was really warm and made us feel really hot!
There were so many great ideas!
“I play water fights”
“I drink lots of water”
“I use sun cream and I wear a hat”
“I eat ice cream and ice poles”
”My favourite is to eat ice lollies”
We all agreed that one of the best ways to cool down was to eat ice cream or ice lollies! This gave us an idea… to make our own ice cream shop where we could sell all sorts of ice creams, ice lollies, milk shakes and ice poles.
We used a selection of craft materials to make our icy treats and our ice cream shop.
We then each took turns to be the shop keeper or be the customer.
Which cool treat would be your favourite?
”I like a strawberry cone and sauce”
”mmmmm mint choc chip is the best”
“I like to lick the ice lollies”
To finish our day we made it real – we had some icy treats at snack time! What a great way to end our hot and busy week, before the rain came! 😎
Hopefully Mr Sun will be back soon! 🌞
🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️
Harvesting our vegetables
We noticed something about our planters in the garden today… they had vegetables in them! We looked deep down to the roots to make sure that they were able to be harvested.
We noticed that we had different varieties and colours of turnips and baby potatoes that were ready to be picked.
Some of them were a little bit tricky to pull out of the ground so we had to work together as a team to make sure we could do it.
”I am an expert at digging for potatoes”
”That one is so big, I need help with this turnip”
Look at all of these potatoes and turnips that we grew!
We then decided to offer our turnips to the parents at Cart Mill, so displayed them at our front door, please feel free to help yourself to one!
We decided that our potatoes looked far too yummy to give away, so we cooked them and tasted them for ourselves…
Wednesdays are for Wild Raspberry picking 😃
Today at Cart Mill family centre the children discovered wild raspberries on their nature walk. They talked about what other fruits grow wild in Scotland” I found strawberries when I was on holiday , they were really sweet” “ I like finding brambles on a walk they are big purple and juicy ” They collected the raspberries and decided to make them into yummy muffins.
The children looked up a muffin recipe in a baking book and decided what ingredients they would need. “We need flour sugar milk and baking powder to make them rise” “let’s wash our raspberries so they are clean ““We will need scales to weigh out our ingredients “ “ The children were able to name and weigh out their ingredients waiting patiently on their turn.
“ I need 150 grams of flour” It’s not sticky enough you need more milk” “ I need to put in two tablespoons of sugar “
The children used lots of descriptive language whilst making their muffins. They are looking forward to tasting them at home , well done everyone.
Feeling hot hot hot!
The weather has been so hot today that we decided we needed to do something a wee bit different to keep us nice and cool!
We blew up our red balloons and off we set on our adventure!
First of all we landed somewhere red and hot (just like Cart Mill!) it was the planet Mars! We can’t walk on Mars because it’s too hot, so Our balloons and the gravity made us float!
Next we landed on planet upside down! It was such a funny place! We heard some music, so had to do some upside down dancing! You even have to ride your bike upside down here!
Finally, we landed on planet relaxation.
We had a lovely lie down and practised our breathing.
Planet relaxation was definitely our favourite place of all and was just what we needed on such a hot day!
Let’s hope it’s a wee bit cooler tomorrow!
Bookbug plays hide and seek!😁
Today the children and Bookbug had an impromptu game of hide and seek!
The children took turns hiding Bookbug characters within in the room, then gave their friends clues using directional language forwards, backwards, in, under, over .
The children were using their problem solving skills to recall the clues and were working together to find the toy the quickest.
After such a busy game we were glad when it was time for snack!
