We’re Going To School!

Over the last few weeks our pre school children have been engaging in a transition programme alongside ‘David the Duck’ to support them in their transition to school.
We began by meeting David and introducing ourselves.

We discussed what we thought we might be going to learn at school.

We used emojis to share how we are feeling about going to school, we decided we are happy, excited and maybe a little nervous!


David showed us his school uniform and we talked about the different schools we are going to and what our uniforms might look like. We drew pictures of what we would like our uniform to look like.

David showed us his school bag and we talked about the things we would put inside our own school bags.

”We might need snack and lunch in case we get hungry.”

”We might need our wellies like at nursery.”

We also explored David’s pencil case and enjoyed looking at the different things inside.

We talked about how we could make new friends at nursery by asking questions about them. We played a game called ‘Getting To Know You’ where we rolled the ball to each other and shared information about ourselves.

”My favourite food is pizza”

”If I was an animal I’d like to be a jaguar.”

We wrote postcards to our teachers to help them get to know us a little better.

Finally we shared some of our favourite memories of our time at Cart Mill and hung them on our memory tree.

Good luck in your new adventures at school boys and girls!

Article 13 I have the right to find out things and share what I think with others, by talking, drawing and writing.

 

Painting with passion

The children have been thoroughly enjoying exploring lots of vibrant colours in the gross motor art area.

Today the children chose the paint they wanted to use, along with the rollers and brushes. We gathered our resources and decided we would use different textures of paper. We began by talking about the different textures and how they felt.

“This is bumpy”

“This one is shiny and smooth”

“It bumpy”

“It’s rough too”


The children then chose whether they wanted to use the brush or the roller and began exploring with the colours and the textures to make some big art! They used their gross motor skills to make the big movements required to roll and brush on the paper. Working together, they all took turns swapping the resources and colours making sure that everybody got a shot of everything they wanted.


The children then decided to explore their colour mixing skills. As they mixed, they became more confident using their design process, they created new secondary and tertiary colours.
“ look purple”

“I made brown”

“I love orange”.

Our older children really enjoyed using the new paint tools to create vibrant and wonderful patterns, in the style of our featured artist “Steven Brown”. While our younger children enjoyed using their gross motor skills to make marks on the ground using a big space to expand their creative skills.
We used so many skills in our gross motor art area today without even realising because we were having so much fun creating our abstract art.

“I am using my hands”

” I am making lots of lines”

I am making my shapes different colours”

”I am making shapes and mixing the colours together”

Who knows what creations we might make tomorrow in our gross motor art area!

Outdoor Fun

So far this month we have had great fun outdoors where we have been developing our gross motor skills.  We have done this through various activities from running in an empty garden, designing an obstacle course, to practicing our hopping and ball throwing and catching skills.


“I’m the winner!”

“Look I can do it!”

Using our creative imaginations, we turned our stage into a pirate ship!  It was so much fun drawing our own treasure maps and using them to go on an adventure to find the treasure. “X marks the spot!”  We climbed the mountain, crawled through the cave, balanced on the bridge, avoiding the shark invested waters below, to find the treasure.

“Shiver me timbers!”

As it’s nearly time for sports day we have been practicing running, balancing, waiting patiently for our turn, sharing equipment and cheering each other on!

Article 29 – I have the right to an education that develops my personality.

Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play.

Number Stones

Over the past week we have been developing a range of skills at our play area. From counting to recognising numbers, shapes and patterns, Gross motor skills and writing stories we have experienced it all. The children have been so creative.

I observed the children playing a game at the clay table, they were drawing pictures in the clay with different clay tools and asking their friends to guess what they had made. One child wrote the number 4 in clay.

“Guess what I’m drawing it has a shell on it” – A snail

“I draw happy face”

“I did number 4, cause  I’m 4”

This lead us on to writing numbers in the clay, we made number stones and decided to paint them lots of different colours. When the paint was dry we brushed over them with Pva glue and left them to dry. Finally using a black marker to make numbers stand out.


The children have used these number stones to lead their own learning. We have used our counting skills and number recognition to rearrange the numbers in order from 1-10.
They have played lots of different games with the number stones, one game involves the children laying the numbers out in order and closing their eyes 👀  I take one number stone away and they have to guess what number is missing. To make it more challenging we mixed the numbers up and before removing one.

“It’s number 4” Next we added in numbers 10-20 to add fun challenge to their learning.


“I’m doing it upside down and the wrong way round 😂”

Puppet Play

Over the last few weeks the children have been involved in activities relating to castles in the junk modelling area.  As we come to the end of this activity, the children realised that the castle had no people living in it, so they wanted to make some characters for the castle.

First, we searched to see how to make puppets and what resources we had available in junk modelling. We found some lolly sticks and colourful paper to make our characters.

Some of the children chose to use glue to make their puppet and others used cello tape.

Then they dressed the puppets using colourful paper before giving the puppets a face, which gave the puppets their own personality.

“That’s the bones, otherwise he will fall apart”

The children came up with the idea of using a second lolly stick to give their puppet arms.

Children  benefit from puppet making as it helps to develop their creative imagination.  Some of the children played with the puppets in the nursery through role play and creating personalities for their puppets.

One puppet even got his very own castle.

This fun activity also increases communication and social skills.

Cart Mill Castle.

Article 28 – I have the right to an education.

 

 

 

Sequencing stories

The children have been enjoying telling their own stories using the puppets which sparked us to learn more about how a story is structured. We have learned that a story needs a start, where we choose a setting and meet the characters, a middle, where we develop the story and an ending.

We have used familiar stories, such as The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff to help us understand how to sequence a story.

We have also been creating our own books using an online tool called book creator. Here is Erin’s version of The Billy Goats Gruff.

Some of the children even felt confident enough to create their own stories. Grace used the story prompt cards to choose a main character and a setting then created a wonderful story!

Some of the younger children have enjoyed using the pictures in the books as prompts and demonstrated great confidence when sharing a story within a group. We even have some budding illustrators among our two year olds.

UNCRC article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Let make muffins!

Today at the baking table, a small group of children were busy making banana muffins. Having made them most weeks, they have developed the skills to bake them independently. Today, they took full control of the activity and made the muffins with minimal support.

First, the group gathered their bowls, spoons, and ingredients. Then, they washed their hands and put on aprons, ready to begin.

I asked what they needed first, and they promptly replied that they needed to mash the bananas. They peeled and placed a piece of banana in each bowl and began to mash it with a spoon.

Next, they said, “We need 2 scoops of flour.” Taking turns, they measured out 2 scoops each and added them to the bowls.

The next ingredient was “1 scoop of sugar.” Once again, they took turns measuring out 1 scoop each and placing it in the bowls.

I then asked, “What do you think we need next?” They replied, “Baking powder, 1 little spoon.” Passing the baking powder around the table, they added it independently.

The final ingredient was soya milk. Using their judgment, they added the milk a little at a time, mixing it in until they were happy with the consistency.

Once the batter was well-mixed, they started spooning it into the cake cases, demonstrating good hand-eye coordination. When all the cases were filled, they were ready for the oven.

Twenty minutes in the oven and voilà—delicious banana muffins

 

Symmetry in our Butterflies 🦋

The children have been fascinated by our butterflies and the patterns on their wings “ look the two wings are the same.

With this in mind we decided to make our own butterflies. We worked hard preparing our wings sharing our ideas and discussing colours.

” Butterflies fly in the sky so we paint the sky and added in a few clouds because it’s raining today “. We then got busy cutting out our butterflies.

The boys then added on some circles to the butterfly wings “ they  look like little eyes”. Now they are ready to fly in the sky…..

We looked at another way to create our own pictures which shows how symmetry works this is a geometric shape or object which can be divided into two or more identical pieces.

The boys and girls worked independently and also co-operated with each other to chose colours of paint and discussed patterns for their butterflies.

We also used a mirror to give the effect of a larger image of symmetry.

I am sure you will agree we created some lovely pictures. Have a look when you are outdoors to see if you can spot any butterflies 🦋.

Article 13 – You have a right to find out things and share with others what you think.

How Many Jelly Beans?!

Some of our children have been asking to explore ‘big big numbers’ so today we introduced them to the story of How Many Jelly Beans?

We began the story of Emma and Aiden who are discussing how many jelly beans they can eat. Starting with ten jelly beans, the number of jelly beans gets higher and higher as they try to outdo each other with larger and larger amounts. Each quantity is represented in the same amount of jellybeans which prompted lots of discussion from the children as the numbers increased more and more.
“Look at all these jelly beans!”

”1000 has three zeros.”

“There are too many to count!”

You might be sick if you ate all of them!”

The children got more and more excited as the numbers got higher and higher and soon the whole page was full of jelly beans as we got to ONE MILLION JELLY BEANS!

When we finished the story Helen invited us to carry out our very own Jelly Bean Challenge. We had a large jar of jelly beans and our challenge was to guess how many were inside. We all took a turn of holding the jar to help us estimate how many. We learned that estimating means having a look and guessing how many by what we could see.


We estimated….

”I think there is one million and forty four”

“I think there is a trillion!”

We decided that we wanted to count our jelly beans to see how many we had. We had lots of discussion about how we could count them and we finally decided that we would first sort them into colours and then count them.

It took a long time to count them as we had so many but we worked together as a team and found that we had 136 jelly beans altogether!

We had a great morning of counting and estimating and perhaps even more surprisingly, no jelly beans were sneakily eaten!

Article 28 You have the right to education

Mondays garden fun including Releasing our beautiful butterflies🐛🦋


Today the children decided it was time to release our butterflies. The species we have are called Painted Ladies. We made sure the weather conditions were suitable for example the temperature was above 12 degrees and it wasn’t to windy. The children measured out a nectar solution of one teaspoon sugar to 100mls of water  cut up some tangerines and mashed a small slice of banana to put outside in case the butterflies needed energy to look for flowers.  I explained that the butterflies mouth functions like a straw to sip up the nutritious liquids and that they should live two to five weeks. Then the children unzipped the habitat and patiently waited for the butterflies to fly away.

 

The children were delighted to see the butterflies so close up. “ It’s got a very furry body” “It’s tickling my nose” “I think butterflies have a nice pattern on them, I like the colours on them”


In the garden today we also did a little weeding  and planted some herbs to make our mud kitchen concoctions a bit more interesting. The children planted parsley coriander and basil they thought the basil had the nicest  scent.


The children were very gentle while planting their herbs and knew that they would need sunshine and water to grow. It has been such a busy day, planting and releasing our butterflies. Maybe you could have a look and see what other species of butterflies you have in your garden or in the local community when you are out and about. We would love to see any pictures!

Article 28 Every Child has the right to an education.