All posts by Miss Brown

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Slime recipe

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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 👨‍🍳 👩‍🍳

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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

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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

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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

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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 😃

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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

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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

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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.

There was lots of great ideas.


“A bowl of soup with spoon”

“Pikachu”

“I made a snail”


They put their finished models on the shelf to let the paint dry, we can’t wait to see the end result.

 

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Welcome to our hairdressers ✂️

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A conversation sparked between the children when some members of staff came to nursery last week after having their hair done in preparation for Derek’s Big Day.

“I went to the hairdressers last week”

” Can I do your hair?”

“My mum gets her hair cut in my kitchen, the hairdresser comes to my house”

“I go to the barbers with daddy”

The children used imaginary brushes and “honey spray” to do each others hair until it was “nice and soft”.  This morning I left a box of hair styling and barber tools in the home corner to see what the children did with them.

They tried out some of the tools, brought some chairs over and then went searching for new customers to get their hair done.

“My mum has one of these, she uses it before work In the morning”

“The baby doesn’t have lots of hair”

“Next! What number do you want, a 1 or a 2 or a 3?”

“Look at me, do you like my new hair?”

The children loved being hairdressers and barbers for the day, they were so excited to share and re-enact  their own experiences of hair cuts, at home, at the barbers or at the salon. They can’t wait to do it all again tomorrow.

“Can we do it again tomorrow?”

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Social Studies

Story time 📖📚

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This morning the children had transferred some of our stories and story puppets to the home corner.

They brought some of our dolls over and pretended they were going to read them a story.  First of all they picked out “A squash and a squeeze” then showed the ‘babies’ the matching puppets and named them.

“This one is the pig, the pig says oink”

” This is cow, he says Moooo!”

” The hen goes cluck, cluck”

Using the pictures the children showed their understanding of what was happening in the story and ‘read’ to the babies, using the puppets as they went along and imitating the ways that adults round about them would read a story.

“The hen knocked the jug over”

“Lady pushes pig in house”

“and the cow, its getting too busy in there”

The children had so much fun using their imagination to re-enact real life situations in the home corner.

Article 31 (leisure, play and culture) Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.