All posts by Mrs Barnes

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Getting busy in the garden!

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Today in the garden  we had great fun enjoying some September sunshine! We were very busy developing our gross motor skills in many different ways.

Some children got messy in the paint using big arm strokes to create an art masterpiece. They were using mops, brushes and roller cars to make different patterns.

We enjoyed water play and particularly had fun pouring water down the gutters  and catching it at the bottom.. Rolling the balls down with the water was great, the children realised that the more water they poured the quicker the balls travelled!
Jumping in the very large puddle in the garden was as always loved by the children! They enjoyed getting their suits on and making a big splash! The higher the jump the bigger the splash!

Let’s hope the sun keeps shining down on our garden!

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Apple and Potato Printing!

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Today the children used some of the potatoes we had grown to make pictures printing with paint. They also used some old apples to make different patterns and shapes.
First we cut the apples in half using our safe knives. Even our younger children were very careful and sensible using the knives and displayed great cutting skills. This helps develop their fine motor  skills. Controlling the knife will help prepare them to master other skills like holding a pencil.

The children then used the chopped fruit and veg to create lovely pictures. They chose paint colours and got printing. Some children made different patterns using both shape and colour!

“I’ve made a colour rocket with apple and potato!”

“The apple print looks like a love heart! I love hearts!”

We had great fun in the garden with this activity and created lots of lovely art work too!

Outdoor Learning

Sports Super Stars!

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This week the children have been enjoying sports week. We have been participating in many different sports activities both in the garden and out on the grass! Thankfully the weather has been kind to us so far! The children have been showing their competitive sides and throwing themselves into the races!

One of their favourite races has definitely been the sack race! We are so impressed at how good the children have been at this showing off their fantastic balance and coordination skills!

The egg and spoon race (using bean bags) was great fun,  Some of the children managed the whole race without dropping it, especially the ones that were holding it on!!!  We also ran balancing the bean bags on our heads! This was tricky but the children showed great perseverance to get to the end!

Throwing the rings on to the cones proved to be very popular! The children enjoyed this game and really tried their best to get all the rings over!

We have some really good jumpers at Cart Mill so the long jump was very successful. The children ran up to the rope and jumped as far as they could landing on two feet! The action photos show how much fun this was!

The good old running race is definitely still a favourite! The children just love to run anywhere and everywhere! We had races in the garden and out on the grass and the children particularly enjoyed running down the hill!

Sports fun will continue for the rest of this week. I think we may have some future Olympians or maybe the next Usain Bolt here at Cart Mill!

Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Special Event

Buckingham Palace comes to Cart mill!

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The children have been very excited this week learning all about the Queen and her upcoming Platinum Jubilee. In the garden they worked together using the big building blocks to build Buckingham Palace or “the Queens house” as the children liked to call it!

We added cylinders to our Palace to make turrets and the children wanted a ramp at the front to slide out.


The blue blanket was used to create water in front of the Palace and other blankets to make a bridge at the side!

”The bridge is a shaky bridge to keep people out!”

”No one can get to our Queen across the water!”

The coloured material was used by the children to dress up as the Queen in her Palace. They had great fun roleplaying all different scenarios pretending to be royalty.

The children decided the Palace needed a flag so we painted some cardboard in red and blue to create a flag!

We taped a cane to our flag and stuck it in the Palace.

The children were very proud of their Palace and flag! They had lots of fun playing in it and it attracted other children to come and play too!  We are all looking forward to continuing our Jubilee theme with our party tomorrow.

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Making Suncatchers!

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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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Outdoor fun!!

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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.

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

A Day at the Beach!

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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.

Outdoor Learning

Bowling fun in the Garden!

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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!

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Nature walk between showers!!

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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!

Outdoor Learning

Number Games in the Garden!

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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!