Perfecting our Playdough

We have been very busy creating our visual recipe for our playdough station this week. We have nearly finished it, it’s a work in progress.

Our visual recipe board is to encourage our children to make their playdough independently.
Our playdough area has all the utensils and ingredients accessible to prompt the confidence and independence skills of all the children.

Today, some of the children tried out the recipe board for themselves.
The children looked at the board and collected what they needed. They looked at the numbers which told them the quantity needed and the picture to tell us the ingredients or colour of the measuring spoon.

The children took a bowl each and set to work to add each of the ingredients.

We added oil, warm water, gluten free flour, salt and xantham gum.

The children then chose which colour to make our playdough.

Today everyone wanted to make it red so that colour was added and mixed all together to form the red playdough.


Next the children put their hands in to knead the dough. It was a bit sticky at first so they added more flour.

Then it was ready to play with. We got the playdough tray out and got to work creating our playdough masterpiece.
We had lots of fun making aliens, people, presents and birthday cakes. We also were using the playdough tools to cut, roll and manipulate the playdough.

It’s a very popular area of our nursery, we all like to make our own and learn lots of skills and develop our hand muscles as we play with the playdough.

We are all very proud of the children developing their independent playdough making skills. The children were very pleased with themselves, doing it all independently and having full ownership of the area.

Exploring our Senses

This week in the discovery room we have taken on the role of scientists and started exploring our senses.  Following on from our experiments on how sound travels and using our sense of hearing. Today we explored our sense of smell!

First we had discussions about the 5 senses, focusing on our sense of smell.  The children talked about what we use to smell and even what we could smell around us. Bellow are some comments.

“We use my nose to smell”

“My nose is very good at smelling”

“I smell soap on my hands”

“I’m smell my perfume, it’s my mummy’s favourite”

Next we set up our learning activity.  Providing 8 tubs containing orange, banana, cucumber, coffee, garlic, mint, cinnamon and ginger. These were accompanied by matching picture cards with the written text.

Next I invited the children to start exploring the tubs using their sense of smell and asking if they could identify any of them. Some of the smells were familiar and some were new scents. We made our productions on what we thought may be in the tubs and match them to the picture cards. Once they were all matched we looked inside to see if we were correct.  Below are some of the comment during the activity.

“I smelled orange and banana”

“I have never smelled ginger before”

“I smelled cucumber”

“The garlic is very smelly”

“I smelled coffee, mummy smells of coffee sometimes”

As some of the scents were new to us we had matched some of them to the wrong cards.  Now we had seen them all and we were more familiar with the items in the tubs we tried the activity again. Everyone worked together as a team to smell and share what they thought it may be. Having discussing and debates about what they thought could be in each tub. Working together this time they matched all the correct tubs to the picture cards.

Well done little scientists!

I wonder what we will explore next?

Let it Rain ☔️

Today in the garden we spotted a rainbow in the sky. It sparked a conversation about the weather as it began to fade behind the big grey  clouds.

“It looks like it is going to rain, the rainbow is hiding behind the clouds”

”it rained lots and lots ands lots last night, there was big puddles in my garden I splashed in them”

“It rained so much I catched it in my hands, it was loads”

“How much rain was there?”

”I don’t know,just lots”

We decided to make a rain gauge to see if we could measure the rainfall throughout the week.

We wrote down all the resources we need and made a plan then got to  work.

Cutting off the top of the bottle to use as a funnel we placed it inside the bottle and taped off the jaggy bits to make it safe.
We then added the tip of an old felt tip pen to the bottles to make it easier to see how much rain has fallen. We used red, purple and blue.


We split the bottle in to 4 sections numbering it 1-4 so when it fills up with rain we can measure it. We then stapled the bottles to the fence and are now waiting patiently for it to rain to see how much water we collect. Typically  it stopped raining as soon as we were finished making the gauge.

We will be keeping an eye over the next few days and recording our findings.

Welcome back to our Home Corner!

A very Happy New Year from the Cart Mill Home Corner!

Welcome back everyone! We have been enjoying various role play experiences within our home corner today.

”I’m making my dinner, it’s pasta, tomato pasta is my favourite”

we have been pretending that we are at work…

”it’s a shop, I work in Asda”

We looked at the different numbers on the calculator and had to add up “how much you have to pay”

“what did you buy at the shop?”
“that’s 5 pounds please”

we have also enjoyed looking and talking about the pictures of our families that are displayed in the home corner. We would love to have more of the children’s families displayed as the children love to chat about who is in their family 😍

Loose parts fun 🤩

Today the children have enjoyed being creative in the loose parts area. We explored different patterns including numbers…

Shapes…

and some letters too…

“I want to do a S. That’s in my name”

“The pipe cleaners will work, because they’re straight lines.”

Some children even loved making something completely different all together, like the Scotland flag!

“the peg is for the wee stick on the flag. How can I do the triangles for the inside? I know, why don’t I squish the pipe cleaners?”

The children loved being creative with their patterns, and showed really great problem solving skills when choosing their materials. They were able to recognise patterns that included straight lines as well as more curved lines, and choose their loose parts to explore this. Great work everyone!
What can you make out of loose parts at home? We would love to see your ideas.

 

The tinker table is open for 2023

The boys were making a big super bat motorbike this morning and they decided to make a smaller version at the tinker table.

They drew up some plans…..drawings of what they wanted to make and how they were going to make it.

They choose the materials they needed.

 

They used hammers, nails, g-clamps, spirit levels glue and a variety of other materials.

They were very careful when using the hammer and recalled our safety rules before starting.

They decorated their fabulous models using their own designs and creativity.

Everyone showed a high level of concentration and level of engagement, developing their self help skills and independence.

Look forward to all their exciting designs coming home soon 😁

 

Rainbow 🌈 Puddles

Today in the garden we had lots of puddles and yesterday we had seen a lovely rainbow in the sky. So, we decided to try and make our own rainbow using chalk and the puddles. We had to put wellies on for this! We chose the colour we wanted, dropped them in the puddles and squashed the chalk with our feet.

We had to practise our jumping and balancing skills for this. “I made a violet colour in my rainbow”. The girls and boys wanted to add more water, developing their filling and pouring skills and making different patterns with the chalk. “Mine looks like a unicorn”.

We also added in other resources to create different patterns. This helped the children to practice their mark making. I can use the brush and I can use the paint brush (mop).

Now we have discovered what happens when you mix water and chalk . We look forward to our next mixing with water experiment!