All posts by Mrs Miles

Expressive Arts, Literacy

We’re going on a leaf hunt 🍁🍂

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This morning we read the story of We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger. We started by discussing what we know about the season of Autumn.

”The leaves fall down off the trees.”

”They changed colour.”

Then we all sat beautifully and listened to the story. We learned that leaves on different types of trees will turn different colours. We particularly liked the picture of the red leaves from the oak tree.

After listening to the story, we recreated the story by acting out the different parts.

We collected leaves at every stop on the way…..

…then we used them to jump and play!

What wonderful Autumn fun!! 🍂

Outdoor Learning, Trips and Outings

Colours walk

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Today we have been learning about our senses and specifically talking about our sense of sight. We decided to go for a walk round the local area to discover what colours we could see. We started by creating a colours board we could take with us and made sure we could name each colour.

As soon as we left the nursery we noticed the green grass and there was a yellow buttercup too. Then we saw the yellow gate and the purple climbing frame at the park.

Continuing on our walk we noticed all the beautiful colours of the flowers.


“I see yellow flowers, they’re like sunflowers.”
“I can see purple! And there’s red inside them !”
“There’s lots of flowers in this garden! Look, different coloured tubs!”


But…. the best thing we noticed today was the big blue sky and the yellow sun ☀️

 

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Snail trail

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This morning one of the boys brought in a snail from his garden to show all his friends. We built him a little home with grass, pine cones, shells, a log to climb on and also gave him some cucumber to eat.


“I give him shells.”

One of the boys decided to build him an extra home using the 3D modelling materials from the studio.

“There’s a space at the top for the big snails and a secret bit at the bottom for the baby snails.”

We investigated the snail’s shell and noticed there were lots of spirals on it.

We created our own spirals using loose parts and drawing on the mirrors.


“It goes round and round and round.”

Look out for snails in your garden and you could have some super slimy fun too!

Outdoor Learning

Grassy games

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This morning we went out to the grassy area behind the nursery to play some ball games. These games are designed to encourage colour recognition, sorting and team work.
We started by playing a game of beans to warm up our bodies. In this game the children have to act out the name of the bean e.g. runner beans= running on the spot. We particularly enjoyed pretending to be French beans and calling out “Oooh la la” 🇫🇷😄

After our warm up, we played a game of pirate’s treasure where we pretend the coloured balls are gems and we have to take them from treasure island and put them in to the corresponding coloured treasure chest.

Then we played a colours game where the children run around and, when I shout a colour, they have to pick up the coloured ball as fast as they can.

After this we went completely off script as the children decided they would like to make up their own games. Here are the games we have now added to our repertoire;

Ball tig – the children run around holding the ball and when the chaser tigs you, you have to drop your ball and can’t move until a friend returns the ball to your hand.

Freeze and go- holding up the green ball means you can run around, holding up the blue ball means you have to freeze

Throw and go- holding up the green ball means you can run around and holding up the pink ball means you have to pick up a ball and throw it up to the sky.


A great fun morning with brilliant team work and creativity from the children. Well done guys!

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Kandinsky kids

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We have been learning about different styles of art while developing our gross motor mark making skills and this morning we have been looking at the work of the artist Kandinsky. We discussed how the circles could have been created and the different colours he used. We noticed each adjacent circle was a different colour. Then we started creating our own using the mini mops and a selection of colours.


“It’s like a rainbow Easter egg!”


“It looks like a tornado. You’re going to get sucked in to it!”

Then we decided to try a different method and use brushes to make smaller circles.


“Look at all my spirals.”

Absolutely amazing pieces of art created and some good messy fun!

Literacy, Trips and Outings

Visiting the library

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We enjoyed a lovely visit to Busby library this morning. While walking to the library, we discussed what type of stories we like and which books we might choose.
Once we arrived we chose a book each and settled down to read them. We discussed what we thought the story might be about by looking at the covers then started to explore the books.

We enjoyed reading a story called There’s a Shark in my Bath altogether. I asked the children what they would do if they found a shark in their bath and they responded
“I would run away.”
“I would give him into trouble.”
“I would put him on the naughty step because he’s not allowed in my bath.”

Then Peter from the library also read us a lovely story about a Penguin.

We even got to dance like a penguin 🐧

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Introducing Cart Mill’s butterfly family 🐛🦋

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On the 1st of June our caterpillars arrived at the centre and we have been doing a great job of helping to care for them each day since. We started by investigating the caterpillars 🐛 we watched how they wiggled when they walked and counted how many feet they have; can you believe they have fourteen?!
We watched as they ate their food and got bigger and bigger. They have to shed their exoskeleton in order to grow and we got to feel it, it was very fluffy! Then when we came back after the weekend they had formed their chrysalides! We learned that butterflies come from a chrysalis and it is moths that come from a cocoon.

“They’re so hairy.” “I have caterpillars in my garden.” “Argh, they’re wobbling!”

The chrysalides shook as we transferred them to the butterfly net and we found out that they do this to scare off predators. Next we had to prepare for the butterflies emerging.

“I think they like the nectar.”

When the first butterfly came out from his chrysalis we prepared sugar water for him to drink and put it on some flowers. We also cut juicy oranges and placed them in the net. We learned that butterflies use their feet to taste their food and their mouth is like a curly straw; they unfurl it to drink and then curl it back up again when finished. We now have five butterflies and we have named them Ozar, Mo, Flutter, Anna and Ruby.

“It goes round and round and round.” “I’m colouring my butterfly’s wings.”

After watching the process of the caterpillars changing to butterflies, we were inspired to create our own version of the lifecycle.

Then this morning it was time to let them go….

We started by putting sugar water and oranges on the butterfly table we had previously made with Lauren. Then we opened the butterfly net and waited. And waited 😆 The butterflies were a little hesitant to come out but when they made an appearance they wanted to get up close and personal. One of them landed on the jacket to get a quick cuddle before flying off and the other let us have a turn of holding him.

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Finger gym

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The boys and girls have recently enjoyed developing their fine motor skills by picking up seeds with tweezers to plant their sunflowers so we have decided to create a finger gym area dedicated to outdoor fine motor play. These experiences help to develop the muscles required for handwriting and also helps to develop independence in things such as buttoning jackets.

We started by digging out our log peg boards. Some of these hadn’t been used in a while so we had to assess their safety. We found a few nails were a little wobbly so we very carefully tapped them back in to place. Then we realised we only had three boards and four children wanted to play so we walked around the garden to find another small log and asked our janitor, Michelle, if she had some nails we could use and created a fourth peg board. We used our pincer grip to hold the nail in place then used great hand-eye coordination when using the hammer to make sure we didn’t hit our fingers.

We then enjoyed using our fine motor skills to wrap elastic bands around the nails to create some lovely artworks. Just look at our wonderful designs…

Outdoor Learning

Cart Mill Olympics

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We have recently been enjoying incorporating jumps into our obstacle course.  To further develop the skills involved in jumping, we decided to create our own hurdles.   The hurdles were placed at three different heights to allow for differing abilities and levels of confidence. By the end of our game we were all feeling really confident and were attempting to jump the final hurdle.

As we cleared the hurdles we all clapped and cheered each other on.  Sometimes we didn’t manage to clear all of the hurdles, so we worked as a team to build them back up again.   Great team work everyone!

We discussed the importance of taking a run up first to allow us to clear more challenging hurdles. Just look how high we can all jump! Olympics here we come 😄

Outdoor Learning

The water cycle 🌦

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This morning the children have enjoyed revisiting the ice gardens that they made last week. They could see the different layers within the ice and noticed that the ice was starting to melt in the sun.
“The sun is hot today.”
”The ice is melting!”
We discussed the different properties of water and this led to a discussion about where water comes from. I explained to the children that all the water on our planet continuously moves in a cycle. The sun dries up the rain and sends the vapour up to the sky where the cold air turns it in to clouds. Then once the clouds are full the water comes back to earth as rain.
We then created our own rain clouds.

We used shaving foam to represent the clouds then dropped food colouring on top to represent the rain. This is a great visual for the children to see the cloud filling up before it starts to rain. The children then  experimented with adding more drops and also used different colours to see what would happen.

“It’s raining!”
“It looks like an explosion!”

“I mixed them together and now it looks like coffee.”
”Look, the orange is falling!”

The children had a great time taking part in our science experiment to learn about the water cycle. I’m sure we will be repeating this experience again in the near future.
Why don’t you try this with your budding scientists at home and share your experience on our twitter page @cartmillcentre