All posts by Mrs Barnes

Making Suncatchers!

The children have been really enjoying learning about the weather whilst in the garden. With the season changing we have seen lots of different weather recently! We decided to make suncatchers and hoped this would bring the sunshine back! Instead of just using coloured paper, we wanted to add some natural materials.  We went on a walk to collect pretty blossom that had fallen off the trees and any other materials we could find!

“I’ve found some pink blossom and white!”

We used sticky clear paper to stick all our flowers and coloured tissue paper to. We then folded it over and it stuck the edges together!

“I want yellow paper like the sun!”

“Ah, it’s so sticky my fingers are all stuck!”

We cut them into a nice shapes and then used all our strength to punch a hole in the suncatchers using the hole punch.

“Look, I got it, I’m so strong!”

Finally we threaded some ribbon through the hole and hung them up in the garden!  The children had great fun making these whilst developing their gross and fine motor skills.

“They look so pretty!”

Now we are just waiting for the sun to come back to see what lovely colours and shapes our suncatchers make dancing in the sun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outdoor fun!!

The children had great fun in the garden today. They were stacking the crates to see how high they could jump from! This enabled the children to push themselves physically whilst developing their gross motor skills.


“I can do it myself!”     “Look how high I can jump!”    “1,2,3 JUMP!”

The children really enjoyed climbing, jumping and challenging themselves!

We then got the parachute out for some fun and singing! We put our little star on the parachute and sang twinkle twinkle little star! We tried hard to keep the star from jumping off!

We then lifted the parachute high in the air and took turns to run under it.  “It looks like a big balloon in the sky!”

The children wanted to put a bouncy ball on the parachute and roll it around fast to see how long we could keep it on for! We practiced our counting and kept it on till we got to twenty! Great job!

Finally, the children needed a rest so we sang sleeping bunnies whilst they lay under the parachute. We threw it up in the air and the children loved bouncing around under it like bunnies!

We had so much fun in the garden today.

 

A Day at the Beach!

The recent sunny weather made the children think of summer days at the beach! They set up an area of the garden and made their very own beach! They used the big blue blanket as the sea and the yellow blanket was the sand!

First the children went for a swim in the sea and they gave me the very important job of being the lifeguard!

“I can swim so fast!”      “Ah, a shark is coming!”

The children then collected shells from the sea and took them to the beach for a closer look!

“My shell is so soft!”    “Look, I can hear the sea in mine!”

The children then decided it would be good fun to jump into the sea!
“Look how high I jump!”
We made big splash noises when we landed in the sea!

Using the crates the children pretended they were in pirate ships bouncing on the sea! “Ahoy captain!” They had someone standing on lookout! “Watch out for the tornado!!”, “It’s coming!!”

The children could see pirates coming so decided to build a bigger boat for themselves!   “We can hide in this!”,  “This boat is awesome!”

What great imaginations the children at Cart Mill have. They had great fun through role play and made up a whole story about their time at the beach! They really had great fun whilst developing their communication and  language skills. Role play allows the children to act out and make sense of real life situations which they really enjoyed doing.

Bowling fun in the Garden!

One of our children was telling us about the amazing fun they had ten pin bowling with their family! They were so excited to have won the game and wanted to share their story! We decided to make our own bowling game for the garden which the children were very excited about! First we put some water in bottles to stop the bottles blowing over in the wind! The children chose different colours of food colouring to make the bottles brighter!

We gave the bottles a good shake to mix the colours!
”They are rainbow bottles!”

The children then set the bottles out like skittles in a bowling alley!

”They are in a triangle!”

We then had great fun throwing different sized balls at the bottles to see how many we could knock down! The children noticed that the bigger balls hit over more skittles!

“It’s a strike to hit them all, I play it on my Nintendo Wii!”
The children showed off their bowling knowledge! Some have been ten pin bowling and others have played it at home!

The children kept a record on the wall using chalk of the number of bottles they knocked over using tally marks. They had so much fun whilst developing their gross motor and numeracy skills! I think Cart Mill has some future bowlers amongst us!

Nature walk between showers!!

Today we had a very interesting nature walk! Our mission was to collect leaves and acorns of all different shapes and sizes.
However,  the first thing we spotted on our walk was was two little ducks! We thought this was very exciting as they were running around so close to our nursery!

The children noticed the ducks were different colours and spotted a duck pond for them! (A very large puddle!!)

“They are shouting quack, quack!”    “They are so cute!”
“I love the ducks!”     “They came to our nursery!”

We continued on our walk and the children managed to find lots of leaves and pine cones.  They found both green leaves and brown leaves. They climbed small hills to reach the leaves they wanted.

When we were walking back to nursery  the children spotted a big muddy puddle which, of course, they just had to jump in!! They had so much fun seeing how high they could jump and how big a splash they could make!

”I made a great big splash!”      “The water feels so cold on me!”

Once we got back to nursery we did some printing with our leaves using different coloured paint. The children noticed that the different leaves made different patterns on the paper! We also dipped our pine cones in paint and rolled them across the paper to create some nice patterns.

Whilst making some amazing pictures with the materials we gathered, the children were developing their gross motor skills and had great conversations about their outing! What a fun morning we had!

Number Games in the Garden!

Today in the garden the children were playing games using chalk, hoops and bean bags! The children helped to number a hop scotch grid using chalk  and then had great fun playing on it.
“I jumped on 2 and 3!”         “I can hop and jump to 10!”

The children were trying to balance bean bags on their heads whilst moving around the garden.

“I can run fast with mine!”          “I’m walking slow with mine!”

The children thought it would be fun to try hop scotch with the bean bags on their heads. They demonstrated really good balance whilst hopping and jumping!

The children thought up a good game to play with the bean bags and hoops! They numbered inside the hoops with chalk and earned points for throwing the bean bags into the hoops! When it got too easy they moved further away from the hoops!

What a great game! We had really good fun in the garden today!

Lots of fun in the garden!

Today the children had great fun in the garden. They set up the guttering on our new stands and loved rolling balls of different sizes down the slopes. The aim was to catch the balls in the basket at the bottom!

The children showed great problem solving skills whilst developing their gross motor skills stretching, reaching and chasing the balls. They were very excited when the balls landed in the basket.

Before home time the children enjoyed having  fun out on the bikes. They loved zooming around the garden and were very excited that it was getting dark! This further develops their gross motor skills, balance and coordination.

Lots of fun and fresh air today and the children showed great teamwork and amazing turn taking in the garden!

Water mixtures!

Today in the garden the children had great fun at the water area! They used the hose to fill up bottles and jugs! They each added a different colour of food colouring to their water using pipettes to see what happened! This helps to develop their fine motor skills.

“The water is all blue!”

”My water has all orange swirls!”

The children thought it would be fun to mix colours together! They added the blue food colouring to the orange water!
”Its turned green!!!”

The blue food colouring was added to the red! “It’s made purple!!!”

The children then just had fun pouring all the  different coloured water into different jugs and tubs and finding out what colours they could make!
“They all make brown!!”

What amazing colour mixing and colour recognition!

The McDougalls Christmas Party

The children have all been enjoying watching the ‘McDougalls Christmas Party’. There has been lots of dancing, singing and laughing! The children particularly found the jokes from the Christmas crackers funny!!

‘What did one snowman say to another snowman?’
‘I smell carrots!’

’What did Santa’s little helper learn at school?’
’The elfabet!’

This certainly got us into the Christmas spirit!! We saw a cheeky elf, Santa and a Christmas fairy visiting the McDougalls. We had great fun doing the Hokey Cokey. It’s a big thumbs up for the pantomime from the children at Cart Mill.