This week we have taken two groups to the forest to experience learning in the wild! Forest School is a fabulous experience that we run for our pre-school children which has many benefits for them. Over the past couple of days we have seen the children flourish in their new environment. As it was our introductory week, we spoke about hazards and risks and how we were going to keep safe. We set some boundaries, they were far away so we had lots of space to explore but we could always be seen by an adult!
We looked at trees that might be good to climb and then we climbed! We squelched in the mud, a lot, some of us even lost our wellies in the muddy mess!
We explored nature, there were lots of plants to look at and one in particular we could smell. Wild garlic! It was everywhere, so we felt very hungry. We stopped for some snack before going to find more to explore.
Then we went to look at the horses in the field next door. They were munching on their grass so didn’t want to come and see us.
Before we knew it, it was time to go back to Cart Mill but we can’t wait to get out again next week.
All posts by Val MacLean
Gardening is Great!
We love gardening in Cart Mill and the weather never stops us getting out to see what we have growing in our garden. As it has been a little cold recently, we took a trip into the greenhouse to see if any of our seeds had popped up through the soil and they had! We checked that everything had enough water to drink and looked to see if any of the plant pots needed turned round – did you know that plants grow towards the light so sometimes they can look a little squint when they start to grow?
With everything looking okay, we thought we would test out our sense of smell. We have some herbs growing in the greenhouse at the moment so we each got to pick a small leaf and rub it around in our fingers. Then we had to take a big, deep sniff and guess what we could smell – it was mint! It was just like toothpaste.
We then moved outside to see what was growing in the planters. We have some lovely spring flowers growing but we suddenly spotted some big green leaves – is it cabbage?
No, on closer inspection, we discovered it was rhubarb. We wondered if there was anywhere we could use some rhubarb – I know, we could give it to Gail and she could help us make some rhubarb muffins! So, we decided to pick some – but not too much, to hand in to the baking area. It was quite hard to pull but we tugged and we twisted and CRACK, out the stalk of rhubarb came. After thinking about it, we decided that two stalks would be enough.
By now it was raining quite heavily so we thought we better go inside. Although, we had one last use for our rhubarb, an umbrella!
Gardening with children has so many benefits, which is why we are so fond of promoting it at Cart Mill. Benefits include: improving your mood, gardening reduces stresses and improves your overall mood; it is a great form of exercise, gardening is physical and can keep children active; understanding nature, gardening allows children to get close to worms, bees, flowers etc; stimulate senses, gardening helps us use all our senses; gardening can promote healthier eating, children also get an understanding of where food comes from and how it looks in its natural form; it is cheap, gardening is a great way to learn together with very little cost, even if you don’t have outdoor space, you can grow tomatoes or peppers from seed at your window; It is fun! The most important part of gardening, you can explore, investigate and see thing happen – sometimes you just need to be a little patient!
Cart Mill Chat
Apologies, but due to a technical error, we are unable to send out Cart Mill chat in the usual way today. We hope to have this rectified by Monday morning but in the meantime, here it it!
Cart Mil Chat
Dear Parent/Carer
What an exciting week we have had with science opportunities using the rainy weather as a provocation. Junk modelling is continuing to be incredibly popular linking to space – look out for our Cart Mill robot!
Maternity Leave
Today we said goodbye to two of our colleagues as they finish for their well-earned maternity leave. Sarah-Jane, our senior child development officer and Lorraine, our early years playworker both finished today to have a few restful weeks before their new bundles of joy arrive! The children made beautiful cards and even suggested names for the new arrivals.
Spring Crafts – Family Event
We are looking forward to our Family Spring Craft event taking place from 18 – 22 March. This will be a wonderful opportunity to come in and spend some time with your child making spring creations.
Junk Modelling
We are still looking for your junk! The children love creating models from boxes and cartons. They especially love sticking lots of small boxes together to construct amazing creations so if you have anything destined for the recycle bin, send it in to us! Please remember to wash all cartons before dropping them off.
Care Inspectorate
Please see attached questionnaire from Care Inspectorate. We appreciate your feedback as it helps us to improve and make sure we are getting it right for our families.
https://forms.office.com/e/yHiAjyFuEu
Planning Interests
We have displayed children’s interests at our reception area on our planning sheets, we would love for you to have a read and add on any interests from home. Post-it notes have been supplied for you to let us know what you are doing. We will then look for opportunities to continue this learning within our provision.
Many thanks for your continued support,
The Cart Mill Team
Bye bye babies
Today we said goodbye to two of our colleagues as they finish for their well earned maternity leave. Sarah-Jane, our senior child development officer and Lorraine, our early years playworker both finished today to have a few restful weeks before their new bundles of joy arrive! The children made beautiful cards and even suggested names for the new arrivals.
These included Spiderman, Baby Spiderman, Rainbow, Kelsie, Forever Baby and Teddy Bear. I wonder which of these fabulous names Sarah-Jane and Lorraine will pick!
After giving over lots of lovely gifts, we sang songs and said goodbye but thankfully it is not forever. We cannot wait for the babies (and their mummy’s) to visit us at Cart Mill.
Christmas is in Full Swing
Christmas is certainly in full swing at Cart Mill. Just when we thought we couldn’t fit anymore in to our calendar, we had a visit from Clydebuilt Puppet Theatre in to do not one but two shows of The Gingerbread Man!
We all loved it. We laughed, shouted, squealed and sat so well. Bet you’re thinking oh no you didn’t, but OH YES WE DID!!!!
Tomorrow, it is Christmas lunch in the centre then later this week we are starting some Christmas baking and lots of rehearsing for the Cart Mill Christmas Concert. We also have Colette coming in for some Christmas dancing next week, pyjama/movie day and hopefully a visitor from the North Pole! 🎅
We will all be exhausted by Christmas!
What do you love about Cart Mill?
The children wanted to share what they love most about Cart Mill.
Cart Mill Christmas Concert
We had a very busy day today, hosting two fabulous Christmas concerts. Both started off with a welcoming hot chocolate, complete with cream and marshmallows and what else, but a mince pie 🥧.
This gave parents the chance to chat and catch up with each other before our first indoor concert since 2019.
It was so nice to have such a busy centre, filled with the chat of families.
The children have been practising their songs all month and the hard work and rehearsals paid off as they were magnificent.
The staff have worked so hard with everyone and our families were treated to the Christmas favourites, We Wish You a Merry Christmas and of course Jingle Bells, as well as a few other songs.
Once the children had finished, we decided it was so good, we would sing it all again but this time we decided the grown ups should join in too!
Thank you all for joining us for our concerts today, we loved having you back in the centre and hope you agree with us that our Cart Mill children are super talented!
For anyone who finished up with us today, please have a wonderful break with the people you love and we will see you next year.
Winter Crafts
It was lovely to have our families visit the centre to take part in our family winter craft sessions.
The children really enjoyed taking part in the winter themed activities alongside the special people in their lives. There were lots of different crafts to make, each with a different theme. We won’t tell you what they all are as we would love you to come and see for yourself!
Remember that the crafts are running all week and we have 3 sessions a day. So, please sign up via the sheets in reception and come in out of the cold and join us for a coffee and some wintery fun with your wee one!
Pancake Friday
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!
Science is Magical
As it is Science Week, we decided to get some help from the experts! We invited Miss Mortimer and Deanna over from the Science department at Williamwood High School. They brought lots of equipment with them so that we could become scientists for the day!
We heard that sometimes scientists had to wear white coats and goggles to protect themselves when doing experiments but we were not going to be using any dangerous equipment so we didn’t need to.
The first experiment we were shown was how to make marbling on water. Miss Mortimer explained that sometimes materials were ‘attracted’ to each other and sometimes they were not and they ‘repelled’. We had found this out when we had been looking at magnets and how they worked so the children said they knew that magnets liked things that were metal but didn’t like plastic cars!
We each picked a piece of black card, and Deanna put a basin of water in front of us. She then got a ‘pipette’ which Miss Mortimer explained was what scientists use to get small droplets of liquid. Deanna used the pipette to suck up some clear nail varnish and drop it on the water.
The nail varnish didn’t mix into the water, instead it sat on the top and made a sheen on the surface of the water! The children all got a turn to place their black card onto the nail varnish sheen and gently press the card into the water. When we lifted the card out, it was all shiny. We enjoyed doing this and all said we wanted to do it again using different colours of nail varnish.
The second experiment was AMAZING! Miss Mortimer explained that liquids moved about and that they fitted the shape of a container but she said that a solid didn’t, she told us our table was a solid. She then said there are things called gases and sometimes we have gas in our tummy that needs to escape!
Miss Mortimer and Deanna got a beaker of water and added food colouring. We chose blue. Then, we added some oil to the beaker. The oil did not mix into the water, instead it rose up to the top of the beaker and sat on top of the water.
Deanna then added a magic tablet (alka seltzer!) and we started to see some bubbles, the bubbles were the gases trying to escape! We could see the blue water bubbling up through the oil just like magic. We all took a turn of squeezing the pipette into the liquid to make our own bubbles. It was great fun.
We had the best morning being scientists. We loved our visit from Williamwood High School and can’t wait for them to come again. Why don’t you try creating these fun experiments at home, and if you know of any others then please let us know!
