All posts by Miss Brown

Baking, Creative movement, Creativity, Digital Technology

Home Room Highlights

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This week in the Home Room we’ve been very busy! The children enjoyed dancing and dressing up, using their imaginations and having lots of fun together. We also did some muffin making and practised our number skills through different activities. It’s been a wonderful week full of creativity, learning and smiles!

in our baking area, the children have been busy making muffins and developing lots of important skills along the way. They have been practising measuring, counting and carefully following a recipe. It has been lovely to see some of the children confidently taking on the role of the adult, helping to guide their friends and supporting them step by step as the work together to follow the recipe.

“Measuring the flour.”
“Just a little bit.”
“I think we need a little more.”

In our story corner, the children have been confidently using their technology skills to scan QR codes to listen to and watch some of our favourite stories. They have really enjoyed choosing stories independently and using the technology to bring the books to life. It’s been wonderful to see their confidence grow as they explore stories in this exciting way.

We enjoyed playing ‘Spin the Wheel’, where the children practised their subitising skills by quickly recognising how many spots they could see and matching the quantity to the correct number. The children had lots of fun taking turns and building their confidence with numbers through this game.

“Spin the Wheel!”
“I have that number.”
“What number is it going to be?”

The children also loved challenging themselves in our ‘Number Hunt’. They searched carefully to find the numbers before the timer ran out, showing great focus and determination. Some of the children even challenged themselves further by reducing the time with each attempt to see if they could beat their previous record!

“I can beat the timer!”
“I bet I can do it in one minute!”

Finally, the children have loved exploring the dressing up clothes in our home corner. They enjoyed creating imaginative scenarios, pretending to be different characters and showing off their dance moves in their wonderful outfits. It has been lovely to see their creativity and confidence shine as they play together.

Article 31 Children have the right  to relax and play

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Line Patterns

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This week in our mark making area we have been exploring pre-writing line patterns. Pre-writing line patterns are simple lines, shapes and strokes that children learn to draw before they start writing actual letters or numbers. These patterns help develop the fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and muscle control needed for letter formation.

This week was Diwali and we celebrated in our mark making area by creating our own mehndi hand patterns.

“I have done some wiggly lines and spots.”
“Look at all my line patterns.”

We loved rolling the dice and copying the line patterns to make some crazy hair!

“I got some wavy lines. These are easy.”

“My hair looks crazy!”

We used our chalk pens to draw some line patterns on foil and on our chalkboard.

We were then able to incorporate the line patterns into our drawings.

“Look, it’s raining!”
“My lines are a rainbow!”

Article 28 I have the right to an education.

 

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Sorting Fun

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This week we have been continuing to develop our sorting skills. We have been sorting all different objects in all different ways.
We sorted the sea animals by type.

“ I am putting all the starfish together.”
“I have all the sharks.”

We sorted the buttons by shape and also by colour.

“ I am finding all the circle ones.”
Look I’ve collected all the green ones.”

We realised the snakes were all different sizes. We sorted them into small, medium and large.

“What size are these ones?“
“Mama”
“ I have all the teeny tiny baby ones. They are so cute.”

Now that some of our children are confident in sorting by a given criteria, we are challenging them further by encouraging them to sort by their own attributes.

We read the story of Granny’s Button Box and then Gail showed us something really exciting! Her box of buttons! There were so many and all so different! We had so much fun exploring them and then we began to sort in our own chosen ways.

“I am collecting all the shiny ones.”
“I want all the teeny ones.”
“ I like these blue ones.”

I wonder what we will sort next week?

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We’re Going To School!

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Over the last few weeks our pre school children have been engaging in a transition programme alongside ‘David the Duck’ to support them in their transition to school.
We began by meeting David and introducing ourselves.

We discussed what we thought we might be going to learn at school.

We used emojis to share how we are feeling about going to school, we decided we are happy, excited and maybe a little nervous!


David showed us his school uniform and we talked about the different schools we are going to and what our uniforms might look like. We drew pictures of what we would like our uniform to look like.

David showed us his school bag and we talked about the things we would put inside our own school bags.

”We might need snack and lunch in case we get hungry.”

”We might need our wellies like at nursery.”

We also explored David’s pencil case and enjoyed looking at the different things inside.

We talked about how we could make new friends at nursery by asking questions about them. We played a game called ‘Getting To Know You’ where we rolled the ball to each other and shared information about ourselves.

”My favourite food is pizza”

”If I was an animal I’d like to be a jaguar.”

We wrote postcards to our teachers to help them get to know us a little better.

Finally we shared some of our favourite memories of our time at Cart Mill and hung them on our memory tree.

Good luck in your new adventures at school boys and girls!

Article 13 I have the right to find out things and share what I think with others, by talking, drawing and writing.

 

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How Many Jelly Beans?!

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Some of our children have been asking to explore ‘big big numbers’ so today we introduced them to the story of How Many Jelly Beans?

We began the story of Emma and Aiden who are discussing how many jelly beans they can eat. Starting with ten jelly beans, the number of jelly beans gets higher and higher as they try to outdo each other with larger and larger amounts. Each quantity is represented in the same amount of jellybeans which prompted lots of discussion from the children as the numbers increased more and more.
“Look at all these jelly beans!”

”1000 has three zeros.”

“There are too many to count!”

You might be sick if you ate all of them!”

The children got more and more excited as the numbers got higher and higher and soon the whole page was full of jelly beans as we got to ONE MILLION JELLY BEANS!

When we finished the story Helen invited us to carry out our very own Jelly Bean Challenge. We had a large jar of jelly beans and our challenge was to guess how many were inside. We all took a turn of holding the jar to help us estimate how many. We learned that estimating means having a look and guessing how many by what we could see.


We estimated….

”I think there is one million and forty four”

“I think there is a trillion!”

We decided that we wanted to count our jelly beans to see how many we had. We had lots of discussion about how we could count them and we finally decided that we would first sort them into colours and then count them.

It took a long time to count them as we had so many but we worked together as a team and found that we had 136 jelly beans altogether!

We had a great morning of counting and estimating and perhaps even more surprisingly, no jelly beans were sneakily eaten!

Article 28 You have the right to education

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A Line Can Be……

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We thought we would share with you today what we have been exploring in our literacy corner, lines!  We began our journey of exploration looking at a story called A Line Can Be…..

We loved using our fingers to follow the lines in the book, developing our descriptive language to describe the different kinds of lines we could see.

“My finger is  going for a walk in the book!.”
“Round and round.”

We began to explore lines further. We started by using pens and acetate paper to explore what kind of lines we could make. Some of our younger children used their knowledge of shapes whilst mark making.

“Circles”
“Dot, dot, dot”

Some of our older children explored drawing fast and slow, sharing with each other what happened as their pen made lines across the paper.

Look, when we go faster and faster, the line gets messy, messy messy.”

Others enjoyed exploring the different types of lines they could make.

“I am going to try making boxes like in the book.”
“My lines are loopy lines.”

We even discovered that we could turn our lines  into different shapes to create pictures!

“Look! My lines have made a picture! I have done my family.”

We had so much fun making lines with pens, we decided to explore a different way of making lines, playdough! This time the children were using their knowledge of the different types of lines, using descriptive words to share what they had made with each other. Some children used line templates to imprint into the playdough and some rolled the playdough into different familiar lines.

“I need to push down hard.”
“What will happen?”
” I am making a spiral with my playdough line.”
“Look I have rolled it into a big circle!.”

I wonder what lines we can explore next…..

Maths Week Scotland, Special Event

The Beauty of Maths

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In our Home Room this week we have been celebrating Maths Week  Scotland. We have been using the different learning areas In our Home Room to explore this years‘ Maths Week Scotland theme of  ‘finding the beauty in maths’, learning how we use maths in all different ways.

In our Baking and Sewing Areas….
As part of Maths Week have been exploring pattern through making some yummy fruit kebabs! We talked about the different colours, shapes and sizes of the fruit and then used our favourites to create a fruity pattern.

Some of the children were able to copy and continue a simple pattern using their favourite two fruits.

‘I like grapes”
“Ben do it.”

Some children were able to create their own more complex patterns with three different kinds of their favourite fruit.

“I am doing the same again.”
“I need the banana again.”

In our sewing area we made patterns threading our different coloured beads, and sewing patterns onto the leaves we collected. We had to concentrate hard as it was very tricky!

“In and out.”
“I’m doing colours.”

In our Playdough Area…

In our playdough area we have been learning how to make our playdough more independently. We have been using measuring, pouring and filling skills to correctly follow the recipe . We decided to record our recipe and display it  to help our friends make their own.

“I scoop of salt.”

In our Home Corner………
Stories are a great way to engage children in mathematical conversations. Stories help children to see the relevance of maths to their own lives and develop their understanding of mathematical concepts and language in meaningful contexts.

We explored the story of Simon the Sock. Simon is an odd stripey sock. He lives in the sock drawer with all the other socks. Every sock in the drawer has a pair…except for Simon. Will he ever find his match?

Through exploring the story the children were able to use and develop mathematical skills such as sorting, matching, reasoning and comparing. We loved looking through Simon’s sock drawer. We used our matchIng skills to help Simon  find all the matching pairs!

We then used our observation skills to look at the different patterns. We described all the patterns we could see, spots, stripes, stars and some of us even spotted that we had patterns on our own socks on our feet!   Simon the sock challenged us to use our sorting skills to each decide a different way we could sort our socks. We even used our mark making skills to record how we were going to sort them each time!

When we had completed our challenge we matched all the socks together again in their pairs, well all apart from Simon!
We wonder if any of you have an odd socks like Simon in your home?!