The children wanted to share what they love most about Cart Mill.
SIMOA safe in our garden
We loved watching the diggers and the landscaping team create our new garden space. It’s fabulous having more space to play. We have a big sandpit we can go in and play with and we love it. We can’t wait to plant and grow in our wonderful planters see all the beautiful flowers.
One day we noticed the cold weather had made our garden a bit slippy. We went out to check if our garden was safe to play in.
This sparked an idea. Let’s make our own risk assessment to incorporate our new garden areas. So we went around the garden looking for possible risks.
Our children were very safety conscious and could tell me what is safe and what’s not safe. We took photos of our areas and with a little IT help we made our own safety garden risk assessment.
Before we go out to play our responsible helpers get their clip boards and pens to check our garden. Some of the areas we check are:
our gates,
Our sand,
our tyres,
our stepping logs,
And our doors,
Once we give it all a safety tick, it’s time to come out and play. We have also been learning about risk and staying safe on our obstacle course. How to build it safely aswell as staying safe while completing the course.
We do love risky play, even more now we know how to do it safely.
Some times we do forget, so Emma came up with a catchy wee tune to remind us how to stay “SIMOA Safe”.
We will be learning this song over the next few weeks. (You might recognise the tune from our Christmas concert. ) Watch this space for a video of our children singing it.
Fun in the Pond 🦢🦆
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.
Come dine with us at Cart Mill!
This week at Cart Mill we have enjoyed having some of the parents and grandparents in for lunch with the children.
The children were able to show off their independence skills by serving their own lunches and were super helpers clearing up all the plates and dishes for their loved one.
Having lunch with your child at nursery can have lots of benefits:
- Emotional security and confidence – Seeing their parent/carer in the nursery can provide your child with security, value and make them feel safe.
- Stronger relationships – Shared mealtimes strengthen the parent-child bond in a familiar learning environment
- Positive role modelling – Children observe healthy eating habits, table manners and social interaction
UNCRC Article 24 : I have the right to good food and clean water
Weekly round up- Home Room
Welcome back and a happy new year to everyone!
We have started the new year with some new dressing up clothes in the home corner and the children are loving it! There is so much imaginative play and children co-ordinating who will play which role with each other, creating a wonderful language rich environment.
We have been developing our writing skills at the literacy table by tracing letters on the trays. With Helen’s encouragement, our pre-schoolers are encouraged to recognise and copy the letter cards on the table and our younger learners can engage in pre-writing skills by making circular patterns.
The baking area has transformed into the cooking corner and Gail has been making soup with the children. Just what you need in this weather! The children have been learning how to keep themselves safe while using reals tools and are also learning about measuring and new language specific to cooking.
In the story corner, Eilidh and the children have been re-telling familiar stories. The children have enjoyed using the puppets and taking ownership of the story so much that we created a puppet theatre for them to share the stories to an audience. The favourite stories this week have been The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goldilocks, The Smartest Giant in Town and Jack and the Beanstalk.
Article 29 (goals of education)- Education must develop every child’s
personality, talents and abilities to the full.
Line Patterns
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.
We loved rolling the dice and copying the line patterns to make some crazy hair!
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.
Article 28 I have the right to an education.
Outdoor Classroom Day
Today we took part in Outdoor Classroom Day. Learning in an outdoor environment helps to ensure positive intellectual, emotional, and social development whilst building the foundations for a lifelong connection with nature and our planet.
We have developed our throwing, counting and turn taking skills while playing the bean bag toss…
We have developed our literacy, drama and cooperation skills while re-telling the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff…
We have learned about the seasons and that we need to help feed the animals during the cold months while making bird feeders…
And we have learned how to keep the bugs safe in our garden by making a bug hotel..
We even found our first guest for the hotel- a baby slug…
Article 31- we have the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of activities.
October week autumn fun!
Throughout the week, the children have been exploring the wonders of Autumn and taking part in lots of various learning experiences.
We have been exploring textures and smells with the pumpkins and creating witches potions with water and various different funnels!
The children have also been developing their creativity and imagination skills by making their own spooky witches, spiders and zombies with the playdough and a variety of loose parts.
The children have also been taking part in a special Halloween themed ”dough disco” which helps children to practice different finger movements to develop their muscles in their hands and their brains for early stages of writing.
We also had so much fun in the garden exploring the Autumn leaves, we were throwing them high into the sky and stamping our feet in them to hear the different sounds that they made!
The children have also been creating Autumn transient art pictures using the leaves developing their creative and artistic skills.
Article 28- You have the right to an education
Wild animals in action!
All things wild and wonderful has been a continuing theme in our garden this week! We love small world play and are always keen to introduce our favourite animals, figures and vehicles! Small world play is a fantastic way to develop our imagination, creativity and problem solving skills. We loved one of our friend t-shirts and this sparked the idea to explore wild animals! Delving into our resources we discovered elephants, tigers, gorillas, rhinos, tigers and lions “the king of the jungle!”
One of our favourite books is Rumble in the Jungle and we had so much fun retelling the story using our animals, adding a “roar for the lion”, “oooh-oooh, aah-aah like the monkey”, and our favourite actions for the elephant, chimpanzee and sssssssssnake!
We shared our experiences of visiting “Edinburgh zoo” “the safari park” and chatted about the animals we had seen and which were our favourites. Taking turns, we discussed our favourite animals and shared our fantastic knowledge about the features of each animal!
“the elephant has a trunk, it drinks the water and then spits it out all over its head, like a shower”. “The lion was sleeping and it did a big roar”, the giraffe has a big long neck. It doesn’t have any hands so it uses its big long tongue to eat leaves on the tree. It’s tongue is blue, like my top!”
Next we decided to move like our favourite animals! We agreed that the giraffe is “very tall so we have to reach up to the sky, on our tippy toes”, “the hippo rolls in the mud, like this”, “the crocodile snaps like this”, and the cheetah runs really fast”.
We demonstrated that we can hold balance in various shapes when moving, are aware of and can control our personal space and body parts when moving, perform basic movements such as jumping, hopping and running and move different parts of our bodies at different speeds.
The weather may have been wild but we have had a wonderful time and had so much fun, ROAR!
Article 29: I have the right to an education which develops my personality, traits and abilities.
Fun in the pond
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.
Our Exciting Garden 🪴
Our garden has been very busy and we have especially enjoyed the better weather over the last few days. Playing outdoors allows children develop self-confidence, independence and self-esteem. Their physical health improves through exercise and vitamin D, enhanced mental well-being, better sleep quality and increased social interaction and development.
Of course we are just having lots of fun !!
We have enjoyed developing our obstacle course adding on extra challenges ….
”round and round gets me dizzy”
How many steps to get to the bridge ?
The boys and girls had great fun on be a Pirate day ….
We used our creativity and problem solving skills to build a pirate ship …..
Ooh arrrgh if the pirates caught you they would make you walk the plank into shark infested waters
In the water tray the water had turned red “my hands are red when they are under the water. We did lots of poring and filling to get rid of our Red Sea 🌊 
Finally we have been enjoying some theatre shows on the Cartmill stage showing off our creativity, imagination and acting skills along with some great singing .
After such a busy few days we are all ready for our holiday weekend which we hope you all enjoy.
Article – Children have the right to play and explore their outdoor environment.
