All posts by Miss Mitchell

Burns day at Cart Mill

Happy Burns Day!

Today at Cart Mill we have been celebrating all things Scottish…

We have been making Scotland flags in the playdough area with Emma using blue and white playdough…

We have had so much fun helping Fiona to make Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, we helped to peel the potatoes 🥔 and then we got to taste it at snack time!

We also had a try at some Scottish dancing today in the discovery room… We listened to Scottish ceilidh music and practiced some traditional dance moves with the help of Gails expertise!

In the studio, we have used different coloured ribbons to create our own tartan pictures. The children were able to select their own colours and create their own patterns inspired by pictures of various tartan…

As you can see the children have had so much fun exploring a variety of experiences throughout the day at nursery! We have had a fabulous burns day  🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

 

Welcome back to our Home Corner!

A very Happy New Year from the Cart Mill Home Corner!

Welcome back everyone! We have been enjoying various role play experiences within our home corner today.

”I’m making my dinner, it’s pasta, tomato pasta is my favourite”

we have been pretending that we are at work…

”it’s a shop, I work in Asda”

We looked at the different numbers on the calculator and had to add up “how much you have to pay”

“what did you buy at the shop?”
“that’s 5 pounds please”

we have also enjoyed looking and talking about the pictures of our families that are displayed in the home corner. We would love to have more of the children’s families displayed as the children love to chat about who is in their family 😍

Ice ice baby! ❄️

We noticed on the weather forecast that it was to be extremely cold today.. so we decided to try a science experiment!

Last night, we covered our sea animals with water and left them overnight to see what would happen…

it turned to ICE!!!

The children discussed how the water felt to touch…

” it is so cold I need to wear my gloves”

”if we scrape it, it makes little marks on the ice”

Through exploring cause and effect, the children wondered how we could break the ice?
“we could hit it and it will break maybe”, “we could maybe scrape the ice like daddy does on the car” , “what about a hammer”.

so first we tried with little wooden hammers to break the ice, the children discovered that it chipped the ice a little bit but not enough to break the ice.

So then we borrowed one of the hammers from our tinker table…

“Look Sarah Jane it’s working now!”

”We can free the animals from the ice”!

 

Mark making in the garden

In our garden, the children have been exploring and developing their mark making skills. recently, the children have been exploring patterns and different ways to make them.

At our provocation area, the children were using flour and paint brushes to copy and create patterns…

the children were also exploring mark making in the gross motor art area of the garden today by using the cars to create patterns on paper with paint…

Over the next few weeks, we will be developing our mark making skills through various experiences outdoors and exploring and developing our knowledge of patterns in our environment.

This week in the noisy/quiet room

Following on from recent interests, this week in the noisy quiet room the children have enjoyed exploring the farm animals in the small world area.

The children have been using their imagination and role play skills to create their own stories and play using the small world equipment.

”its Old MacDonald’s farm, there is sheep and pigs and cows”

”There is little cows and big cows, small goats too”

”My favourite animal is the pig”

The children have also recently enjoyed building with our wooden train track and talking about all the different places you could go on a train…

   

”You could go to the shops or to a restaurant”

”I go on holidays”

”Trains go so fast”

Small world play is a great way for children to explore their imagination and develop their role play skills. It could represent a real life place like a farm or it could be a completely imaginary world.

 

Why don’t you try some small world play at home?

Home Sweet Home

Today in the studio the children were exploring different materials to build and create models with using their imagination and natural curiosity.

Firstly the children noticed that we had some new material in our junk modelling area that was gifted to us by a parent at the nursery…

We discussed how the materials felt and the different patterns on them.

  

”This is a big one, its white”

”There is lots to chose from, some of them are bumpy”

”This ones really soft, like a carpet”

Then, the children decided that they wanted to use the material, along with the boxes in our junk modelling area, to create houses!

The children used different shapes and sizes of boxes to create their model houses, they decided that they wanted to use the various pieces of material to create curtains for their houses whilst discussing shapes and sizes of windows and doors.

”I had to use cellotape and be careful with the scissors to cut it”

”The house number is a 1 and a 5”

Two of our children even worked so hard together to create their house, and it was so big, they could even use it for role play!

Castle-tastic!

This week in the studio, the children have been showing an interest in castles!

When the children arrived in the studio room they asked for some music on the board, they decided on Disney music which has a castle as a background, this sparked some conversation about castles and the children asked if they could make their own castles.

”I know what we can do”

Some children decided that they wanted to stick things inside their castle to make it pop up!

”I’m making a draw bridge for my castle door”

We even made a sparkly castle… It was so much fun choosing different colours!

”I’m making windows for my castle, It has a big one and a wee one, at the side for the people to see out of”

The children have been very creative as you can see, I wonder what fabulous creations they will come up with next week?! As always, feel free to donate your un-wanted junk to us as you can see, it comes in very handy and our children love to be inventive with it!

 

Local walk to Bonnyton House

We have been growing some lovely Rhubarb in our nursery garden over the last couple of months, and they were now ready to be harvested.

Yesterday we picked our fresh, home grown Rhubarb. We wondered what we could do with it?

   

We had to use both hands to pull out the Rhubarb as the roots had grown deep into the soil.

    

”Look, this one has a really big leaf”

We decided that we would go for a walk to the local Residential Care Home and drop some off to them as a nice Friday treat. Working with the local community is something we love to do here at Cart Mill and starting back our Intergenerational work is what we are looking to do now that Covid-19 restrictions have eased.

The children were super excited to take a walk over…

 

Intergenerational learning has many benefits and is where people of all ages can learn together and from each other. Intergenerational care is all about providing opportunities for senior adults and young children to come together in the same space and work together to gain new skills and knowledge.

   

 

 

 

 

Garden fun at Cart Mill

We have been having lots of fun in our garden this week at Cart Mill. The children have been extremely busy and creative using their imagination in their play…

On Monday, we opened the ‘Cart Mill Cafe’ where macaroni cheese, chips and ice cream were the speciality! The children used various pots and pans, spoons and bowls and lots of mud to create their meals in the cafe. Throughout this experience the children were developing their role play and imagination skills and using real life experiences in their play.

What would you like from the ‘Cart Mill Cafe’ the next time you visit the nursery?

                              ”I’m making you some macaroni cheese”

”I need to mix the cake, you scoop up the cake and mix it together in the bowl, it needs to go in the oven”

” Here’s ice cream, it has a flake in the top and chocolate sauce”

Then, today, we got a special show performance on our stage in the garden! The children treated us to a performance of ”5 little monkey’s jumping on the bed”. We had to be patient and wait for the curtains to open and for the show to begin…

”It’s nearly time for the show to begin”

     

The children had so much fun putting on a show for their friends, we even had some music on to dance along to!

Harvesting our vegetables

We noticed something about our planters in the garden today… they had vegetables in them! We looked deep down to the roots to make sure that they were able to be harvested.

We noticed that we had different varieties and colours of turnips and baby potatoes that were ready to be picked.

       

Some of them were a little bit tricky to pull out of the ground so we had to work together as a team to make sure we could do it.

”I am an expert at digging for potatoes”

”That one is so big, I need help with this turnip”

Look at all of these potatoes and turnips that we grew!

We then decided to offer our turnips to the parents at Cart Mill, so displayed them at our front door, please feel free to help yourself to one!

We decided that our potatoes looked far too yummy to give away, so we cooked them and tasted them for ourselves…