All posts by Mrs Hannah

Amazing Architecture in Cart Mill City

Over the last few weeks, we have spent lots of time in our construction and block play area. We are so lucky to have a large selection of block play and construction materials to choose from here at Cart Mill. This gives us the opportunity to explore our creativity through designing and building our own models.

Using one of our house plans as a guide, we chose various sizes of wooden blocks to recreate our own houses! Using our knowledge of shapes, positional language and by working together, we created a living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom!  By adding loose parts, we were able to add some extra special features!

“There’s a kitchen. This is the living room. We’re going to make a dining room”.
“The kitchen is next to the living room.  The bathroom is behind the kitchen.”
“It’s got 2 toilets”.
“These are the statues. My mummy has statues in the bathroom”.
“It has a chimney. Steam comes out of it and the bad guys can’t come in!”  “This is my bedroom.  I’m putting a cushion in to lie on”.

Using smaller blocks gives us the opportunity to develop both our fine motor and problem solving skills by discovering how to connect the blocks together to build our models.

We all love playing with our stickle bricks and Lego.  Sometimes it can be really tricky to fit the blocks together. With a bit of patience, perseverance and using our fantastic imaginations, we have created some fantastic models!

“It’s a birthday cake with candles on it”.
”It’s a T”.

“I made a play park.  It has a climbing frame, a slide and a swimming pool”.

Working together and sharing our ideas, we were able to create our very own Cart Mill Lego city! Isn’t it fabulous! We think we would have lots of fun living there!  Can you recognise the special people who live there?

“The swimming pool looks like so much fun. It has a bit to jump off into the water and you go up the stairs and through the door to get to the slide.  It’s got a cafe if we are hungry!”.

To challenge ourselves further, we decided to take our block building  outside! It was so much fun! Working together, we placed the blocks carefully in front and behind each other to create a path all round the Cart  Mill garden! It was sooooo big and meant we were able to walk all round the garden without our feet touching the ground (the floor is lava after all!).

 

 

 

 

Feeling hot hot hot!

The weather has been so hot today that we decided we needed to do  something a wee bit different to keep us nice and cool!

We blew up our red balloons and off we set on our adventure!

First of all we landed somewhere red and hot (just like Cart Mill!) it was the planet Mars! We can’t walk on Mars because it’s too hot, so Our balloons and the gravity made us float!

Next we landed on planet upside down! It was such a funny place! We heard some music, so had to do some upside down dancing! You even have to ride your bike upside down here!

Finally, we landed on planet relaxation.

We had a lovely lie down and practised our breathing.

Planet relaxation was definitely our favourite place of all and was just what we needed on such a hot day!
Let’s hope it’s a wee bit cooler tomorrow!

 

Loose Parts Play

This week in the Discovery room we have had lots of fun exploring loose parts.

We have collected lots of different items to create our loose part trays. Using our excellent fine motor skills, we sorted our loose parts into groups of similar items.

Filling and emptying lots of different sized containers using tweezers and tongs helped us develop our fine motor skills, and develop our understanding of volume and measurement.

“This one has lots of big and small pieces”.

”It’s full. I’m emptying it out”.

It was lots of fun choosing which loose parts we would use to create our transient artwork. We have such wonderful imaginations!

“It’s a volcano with lava coming out”.

”I made a caterpillar with pom poms”.

”I made a maze. The board is the way in. That one is the way out”.

Some of us decided to choose our own loose parts to create the letters of our name.  We each drew our letter then carefully placed our loose parts along the lines.  Don’t they look fabulous!

To challenge ourselves further, we decided to make our names from our favourite loose parts.  We decided we like the pom poms, colourful matchsticks and gems the best!

There are so many fabulous things activities we can do with loose parts that help us develop a wide range of skills, our imaginations and creativity.
Loose parts can be anything from cardboard boxes, yoghurt pots, cotton reels and shells or sticks we can collect on holiday!
Why not have some fun with loose parts at home and see what you can create!

 

Blocks Rock!

We have been very busy in our block area today!

Using our excellent problem solving skills, we explored measurement and balance.  We were able to identify which blocks were “lighter” and “heavier” and discovered we needed to put some of the heavier blocks on the bottom of our towers so that they didn’t topple over!!

It was so much fun adding in our small world figures. We worked together to build stairs for them to climb into their houses and we even constructed a lego train which had a bed to sleep in!

Next we decided to use our larger blocks to build “somewhere to give money out”.  We decided we needed steps and a seat “so we can give the money out to people”.  Using our measuring skills, we were able to compare the size of each block and identify which were “bigger” and smaller” and discussed where we should place them so that it “would be safe to climb on”.  Placing the blocks together we discovered that 2 of our smaller “square” blocks were the same size as “the rectangle one”.


“this one is bigger”

Collecting lots of loose parts gave us lots of “money” and we took turns being “the person who gives the money to people”.  Everyone demonstrated excellent turn taking, counting and negotiating skills!

Block play enables us to explore logical and abstract thinking, use our imaginative and creative skills and develop our communication and negotiating skills, while having lots of fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easter Fun at Cart Mill!

It’s been such a busy week at Cart Mill.  We are so looking forward to our holiday weekend! What better way to end the week than having a fun day!

First of all we decided to have an Easter Egg hunt to make sure everyone has had an egg to take home.  The eggs were tricky to find, but with a bit of teamwork and encouraging each other, we managed to find them all!

Next it was time to practice our directions and positional language on our bikes! We were able to go forwards and backwards, stop and start,  fast and slow, and race each other round our track.  We drew our own arrows and reminded each other to follow them so that we didn’t  have any crashes!

We created our own obstacle course and carried out our  own risk assessments to decide how many crates we would feel safe to jump from.

Then it was time to see who could roll the cable reels the furthest!
We were exhausted after using up all of our energy outside so it was time for some Peter Rabbit  and some popcorn and fruit for snack.

Have a lovely holiday weekend everyone.  We look forward to welcoming you back when we reopen on Tuesday.

 

Spring Break!

On behalf of all of the staff at Cart Mill we would like to wish our Term-Time children and families a really lovely, well-earned holiday fortnight. Please keep safe, enjoy some downtime and as much time as you can having fun outdoors.

We will be here, looking forward to seeing all of our children back in our centre again from Tuesday 19th April.

While some of our staff are on holiday, Val and the rest of the team are here for a chat or to answer any queries you may have.

 

 

Fun at Forest School

We are always so excited when it’s a Forest School day! We have been observing the changes in the Forest over the last few sessions.  As it has been sunny and dry over the last week, it was safe enough for us to explore the river.  We collected our nets and set off!

The water was so clear we could see right to the bottom. Unfortunately we didn’t see or catch any fish! We used a stick to measure the depth of the water and then held it against our boots so that we could see where it was safe to stand.

We found our very own stoney beach where we could look for stones and throw them in the water.  As a group, we conducted a risk assessment and discussed safety rules we should follow when throwing our stones.  We had to be careful to look around us and stay a safe distance from each other before we threw our stones into the water. We had so much fun investigating who could throw their stone the furthest and make the biggest SPLASH! We found lots of different sizes and shapes of stone. We were able to identify which were bigger, smaller, heavier and flatter.  We found one that looked like a pizza and put two together to make a duck!


Of course we have to have snack when we’re at Forest School.  We enjoyed apple, hot chocolate to warm us up and a biscuit (to give us energy!)

There was just time for us to make a few trips up our favourite hill! It was hard work climbing to the top! We were able to feel our hearts beating really fast! Our favourite part was pulling Angela back down the hill with us. She was going really fast!

We can’t wait to see what we can discover and explore next week!

 

 

 

 

World Book Day

We have had lots of fun celebrating World Book Day here at Cart Mill!

We sang our favourite songs and rhymes such a Twinkle Twinkle, Incy Wincy Spider,  Wheels on the Bus and Humpty Dumpty during Book Bug with Emma and Gail.

We had to work together as a team to keep Incy Wincy Spider up in the air! We were so excited to guess what was inside the box and which song we would sing next!

We did lots of bending and stretching following the actions of Head, Shoulders, Knees andToes and Peter Hammer with Gail.

Thank you so much to our parents and children who recorded their favourite stories to share with us.  We really enjoyed watching them on our big screen!

Gail read us a lovely story called the Wonderful World of Weather.  We have chatted about our favourite stories and read some of our favourite books.

Our budding authors have created some potato characters and stories of their own.  Other children have made their favourite characters from books. How many can you recognise?

 

 

Snow much fun!!

We were so excited to see so much snow in our Cart Mill garden today.  We had so much fun investigating how deep it was and how it felt to touch. We even made a Snow Angel!

“It’s cold. I’m picking it up and making a snowball.”

We are so lucky to have a large open space next to our garden with lots of hills which are perfect for sledging!

“I was going so fast”.

We had so much fun racing down the hill to see who could go the fastest! Sami joined in too but we reached the bottom before she did!

Next it was off to the Spider Park.  We decided to call it the Snow Park today!

We had so much fun playing snow tig and making snowballs!

We demonstrated excellent teamwork by pulling each other on the sledge round the Snow Park.  It was hard work!

Of course we have to make a Snowman on a snowy day!  We worked together to roll our large snowballs and found some sticks to use as arms. We made a big snowman and a little snowman.

“This is his head”  ” He has arms.”

After all our hard work it was time for snack. Of course we had to have some hot chocolate to warm us up!

We had snow much fun today!

Numberblock fun!

Today in the Discovery Room we have had lots of fun developing our numeracy skills through use of our Numberblocks!

Firstly we practiced our number recognition skills. We were able to correctly identify the number on each card. Some of us were able to do this by looking just at the number and some of us counted the blocks.

We then used our amazing 1-1 correspondence and fine motor skills to build the correct number block for each card. It was a bit tricky clicking the blocks together but we worked together as a team and helped each other.

We were also able to recognise and name all the different colours and build a rainbow number 7!

Next we decided to challenge ourselves further to see if we could correctly build and sequence the number blocks in order. We were able to identify the numbers that came before and after and which number block was the biggest and smallest.

“I maked all the blocks1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 10 is the biggest.”

We even used the same colours as the real number blocks!

We were having so much fun that we decided to challenge ourselves further by using the activity cards to see if we could add numbers together.

“It’s 3, 4 and 7!”

We even created our own numberblocks using our fabulous mark making skills!


“It’s all the numberblocks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10”