All posts by Miss Brown

Block building, Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Snack

Fun in the Pond 🦢🦆

February 6, 2026 Miss Brown Leave a comment

This week in the Pond the children have been exploring and learning through a variety of different experiences inside and out.

We celebrated Robert Burns day by introducing Scottish traditions in a fun and age appropriate way including the children’s interests to engage them. They made their own tartan using paint and added in cars to create different patterns and prints. We played matching games which sparked conversations about the Scottish pictures and what they are. “ it’s a mouse” 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

The children have been developing their independence with simple activities such as preparing healthy snacks and following the Child smile practice to brush our teeth, learning how to use the utensils in a safe way and the importance of choosing healthier options for our overall health.

The children had fun lying on their tummies rolling the small ball along the floor to each other, they had fun while developing their core strength, hand eye coordination, arm and shoulder muscles which are all important for later skills such as balance, early writing skills and dressing independently. In the garden we used spray bottles with paint to create colourful patterns on the shower curtain and strengthen our hand muscles.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, music, Social Studies

Fun in the pond

October 1, 2025 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Come and see some of the things we got up to today.

The children have been expressing themselves with the paint, using their large motor skills to create their ideas on the shiny tinfoil and seeing how the colours mix together to create new ones .

“My hands are orange”

We have been using our nursery rhymes to recognise colours, make choices and take turns. The children each chose a coloured disc which has a nursery rhyme on the back (eg. Red disc = The wheels on the bus) to sing together.

“My favourite is Twinkle Twinkle”

The children mixed together all the ingredients to make play dough, learning to follow simple instructions and develop their gross motor skills as they stir. They added blue paint to add colour and explored the textures and feelings using their senses.

“It feels sticky”

Finally we played parachute games, using our large muscles to move the parachute up and down working together as team to make it move. We sang some songs and sat under the parachute before doing sleeping bunnies.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Slime recipe

February 12, 2025 Miss Brown Leave a comment

I’m sure you are all aware that the children have been making slime. We have been learning the recipe and would love to share it with you so maybe you could try it at home.

In the mornings the children have been disagreeing about what to make at our malleable area. Some want to make play dough and others want to make slime. So we came up with a way to vote to make it fair for everyone. Everyone who wants to will vote by putting a tally mark in the box using the pictures to help. The box with the majority wins for the day.

“4 people want to make slime already”

“Only 1 choose playdough”

“Slime won”

They start by independently collecting all the equipment and ingredients needed.

~ First step is to fill the jug with water

~ Add one cup of Pva glue to the bowl

~ Add equal parts water to the bowl

~Add 1 level tsp of Bicarbonate of soda

~Food colouring of your choice (optional)

~Add small amounts of contact lense solution (Asda one seems to work best) at a time.

~Mix until all ingredients combine and start to pull away from the bowl

~Knead until it not sticky. (This part is messy, the best way to get it off your hands is to roll the palm of your hand on a flat surface, it will gather and become stretchy like rubber rather than sticky.
The children learn so much from such a simple experience. Their fine motor skills are developing as they use their hand muscles to squeeze, roll and stretch the slime in different ways.

They are expanding their vocabulary as they describe the slime, what colour it is, what it feels like etc.

They are following instructions/recipes, measuring ingredients, colours, shapes…

…The list goes on.

“This is the best day ever”

Literacy, Snack

Mini Master Chefs Soup Edition 👨‍🍳 👩‍🍳

February 12, 2025 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Following on from our Mini Master Chef classes, the children have been making their own healthy soup for snack using the soup maker that Beth gifted to us.

We have been continuing to develop the different skills and techniques learned to cut and peel vegetables as well as learning new words to add to our expanding vocabulary and how to keep safe while in the kitchen.

“I’m using the claw shape to cut the carrots”

“We need to cut the potatoes in to small cubes, it’s called dice”

They put all the vegetables into the soup maker before adding the stock and of course having a little taste of some carrot.

“ The stock adds flavour”

“Will we make ‘Smooth’ or ‘Chunky’ soup?”

“SMOOOOTH!!”

We have changed the recipe slightly each time we have made soup to let the children taste a variety of different flavours, they explore the different vegetables using their senses.

“It’s very heavy and bumpy”

“Ewww the onion stinks”

“ The carrot looks like a snowman’s nose”

“This soup is Delicious”

Creative movement, Creativity, Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Mindful moments, nature, Outdoor Learning, Social Studies, Special Event

Garden roundup

November 9, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

It’s been a busy week for us in the garden. We are developing our motor skills in a variety of ways.

This simple but effective experience enabled the children to experiment with colour mixing as well as developing their fine motor and early writing skills as they made marks on the foil using different tools.

“ The blue got on the yellow and now the yellow looks a bit green”.

“I making fireworks”

The fireworks have really grabbed the children’s attention and been the topic of conversation. Throwing the powder paint on the ground sparked an idea. “The ground is black like the sky at night”

They threw lots of different colours on the ground and used small and large items to move and redirect the paint in different shapes and patterns.

Learning how to move our bodies in different ways to develop our gross motor skills and mark making skills has been so much fun.

We filled some tights with different materials such as sponges, pasta, pom poms and balls and used them to create a piece of art. This allowed the children to explore descriptive language as they figured out how to make marks on the foil.

“The pasta is spikey”

“ This one is really heavy I had to spin round and round to get the paint up there”

“ I want to get it to the top so I have to stretch my legs and stand on my tiptoes and do a big jump”

To end the week we thought it would be a good idea to begin learning about Remembrance Day and why we mark this as a special day. We watched a short child friendly video about the Poppy and decided to create our own.
The children used cut up potatoes and loose parts to make marks on the paper to create a lovely picture.

“ My dad wears a poppy for all the soldiers”

“ We can put purple on it too to remember the Animals”

Creative movement, Creativity, Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Halloween splat painting

October 14, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Some of the children were chatting about Halloween this morning. Following their interest, we thought it would be a good idea to search the internet to look for some activities that we could do in our Gross motor art/mark making area in the garden.

We came across splat painting and thought this looked like it would be lots of fun. We chose some Halloween characters and printed them out and stuck them on to a large piece of card. Then it was time to choose our favourite colours of paint!
“I like the pumpkin, my mum said I can get one at the shop.”

“Can I choose the paint?”
“I like red paint.”

“ This is so heavy.”

“I’m using my big muscles to push the blue paint out.”

Next we went outside to the garden and found a good spot to hang our pictures up. Using different sized paint brushes, we dipped them into the paint and tried out lots of large movements to splat the card until it was covered in lots of different colours of paint. Forming a queue, we were able to take turns to move our bodies in different ways and splat the paint in different directions.

“I’m going to run so fast like Sonic.”

“Me too!”

When the card was covered in paint, we peeled the Halloween pictures off to see what we had created.

“Look, I can see the witches cat.”

“The witches cat is wearing a hat, oh that rhymes!”

“and the pumpkin.”

We had so much fun using large body movements to create a piece of art, while developing our gross motor skills.

Outdoor Learning

Hands up Scotland

September 9, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again! Hands up Scotland collect data every year on how children in Scotland travel to School and nursery, so the children have been working hard today to help carry out a survey to find out the ways in which we travel.

We discussed all the different ways we can travel,

“Flying on aeroplanes”

“Motorbikes and Fire Engines”

“On my scooter”

The children came up with fantastic answers and we decided to make a chart to display how everyone travels to nursery.

They choose blue and purple paint, they each took turns to put some paint on their fingers and put their fingerprints in the column that answered how they travel to Cart Mill.

The older children used clipboards with paper and pens and asked all their friends how they travelled to nursery, they then ticked which column suited their answers.

This is a fun way to develop our numeracy skills in early level data analysis as the children count up all the information they have gathered. We noticed that most of the children travelled by car to Cart Mill.

Baking, Creative movement, Creativity, Imaginative thinking, Outdoor Learning, Snack

Time flies when you’re having fun 😃

July 26, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

We can’t believe its the end of week 4 of our summer term! Time definitely flies when you’re having fun 🤩

This week we have had home made cupcakes and flapjacks for a delicious snack along with some lovely fruit. Our star bakers have been very busy learning how to measure in weight rather than scoops. They used the scales to measure the ingredients looking at the numbers as they go up.

“It’s a 2 and an 8 and a 5”

“What does the ‘g’ mean?”

“I know, it means grams”.

Check out our fabulous clay pictures! We are using our hand muscles to manipulate the clay into different shapes and create our own ideas, while developing our fine motor and early writing skills.

“I made letters with clay”.
“Mines is a spidey web”.

The sun did make an appearance for a little while, just enough time to observe the clouds using our imagination and find different shapes in the sky. It was quite tricky and we soon discovered that everyone had different ideas. We took some pictures and printed them out. Then we outlined the shapes that we could see to create our pictures.

“Mine looks like a monster”.

”It looks like a rabbit”.

Water play is always a favourite in Cart Mill. This week we have been engineers by working together to investigate how to connect the pipes and move the water from one place to another. We decided to construct a huge water slide and explored sending different volumes of water down the big slide to see who can make the biggest splash!

“This is going to be the biggest slide”

“The pipes need to go this way to catch the water”

Yet again we have had an exciting, fun filled week with lots of learning experiences. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for us next week. We hope you all have a lovely weekend🥳.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Number Stones

June 12, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

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 😂”

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, Literacy

Pikachu clay models

May 13, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

The children wanted to make something different with the clay, but they were unsure of what. So last week we sat down together and discussed some ideas, I asked the children questions to get them to really think about their interests and how we could incorporate these in to our clay area.

Pokémon seemed to be a common theme so we used the iPad to search the internet for some Pokémon ideas. We came across a clay Pokémon figure, it was perfect! The children helped pick out some other clay model pictures including unicorns, garden gnomes, and even Elsa from Frozen . I printed these out and laminated them, leaving them on the table to inspire some ideas.

The children began to make their own models, squeezing, rolling, and manipulating the clay to their desired shape. They soon realised looking at the pictures that our clay was grey and the pictures used coloured clay, how would they make their own models colourful? They worked together using their problem solving skills to come up with some ideas. “I know, we could get paint!” “and paintbrushes and paint them and that’s how they will be colours”.

Once their models were finished we left them to dry out over the weekend, ready for painting this morning.