The children wanted to share what they love most about Cart Mill.
What have we been doing at Cart Mill this week?
This week at Cart Mill we have been taking part in a wide variety of learning experiences across each of our playrooms and our garden.
In our Discovery room we have continued along our Jack and the Beanstalk learning journey by investigating “forces” and “travel”. Our mission was to find a way for Jack to get to and from the castle without the giant seeing! To do this we decided to fill the balloon with air and let it go to see how far it would travel towards the castle. It’s been so much fun seeing how much air we need to make the balloon go fast or slow.
In our Studio we have shown an interest in diggers and have been using the water tray as our construction site. We used dried rice to represent the dirt and had great fun using the construction toys to fill, empty and transport the rice. We used our technology skills to look at videos of real construction vehicles on our smart board. This experience had such a great level of engagement from all our children, especially our younger ones. We even found a Danny go video called “digging in the dirt” to all join in with, incorporating our health, well-being and movements skills.
In our Home room we have continued to develop our baking skills by researching recipes, measuring ingredients and making yummy vegan treats for our afternoon snack! The best part was taste testing our baking!
In our playdough area we have been experimenting by adding different scents to our playdough. We’ve tried peppermint, lemon and orange extracts. We even tried chocolate powder to make chocolate playdough. It smelt so good and looked just like chocolate. This week we decided to wander out to the the planting area to choose herbs and flowers to introduce some different scents. We picked basil, thyme, garlic and some flowers. As we grow in confidence, we are able to make our playdough independently using our self serve playdough station. It has been lots of fun choosing loose parts to add to our playdough and creating wonderful models.
Between the smells of playdough and daily home baking our home room smells delightful.
And finally our garden! The weather has been a little varied this week with showers of rain in between the sunshine. As usual, we didn’t let that stop our fun! We have used the gross motor rollers to mark make, played role play games using the play house and even took part in music and movement games such as head shoulders knees and toes. We extended our muddy movers skills by playing catch with the sticky ball and catching mitts. It was lots of fun taking turns with catching and throwing.
We all love learning through our play at Cart Mill! I wonder what we will do next week during our summer adventures?
UNCRC article 28- we have the right to play.
Magic beans at Cartmill 🌱
It the science area we have been learning how to record our findings in different ways.
To do this we have planted some magic beans (broad beans) in a jar to watch how it begins to grow. We noticed that after only a few days our beans started to sprout and change daily.
“Mine starting to pop out”
Using a Calendar we marked on the date of when we planted the beans and have been marking it everyday to show how long it takes to grow our beanstalk.
“why does it have that tooth?”
The children are super excited to grow a gigantic beanstalk. This got us talking more about how long it would take to grow the beanstalk.
Here are some of the predictions we marked on the Calendar
“30days”
“45days”
“48days”
“60days”
As the children observed the beans growing daily we have been talking about which part of the plant they can see?, what helps the plant stand up? and what do we think the roots do to help the plant.?
“it’s growing”
”what is the white bit?”
“It’s going to be gigantic “
Article 13 – I have the right to find out and share information
Article 28 – I have the right to an education
Creative Painting
Today in the studio we decided to have some fun with the paint using our hands and feet! Firstly we laid down a clear shower curtain and chose colours of paint to “squirt” onto it.
How are we going to mix the colours together ? Using our problem solving skills we came up with some good ideas.
“We can roll around ! And I can use my feet . Be careful it is a bit slippy!”
We have developed our tactile and sensory skills from touching the paint and feeling it on our skin and between our toes. This also helps us develop gross motor skills and balance. We discussed colours and watched them mix together .
As we explore the paint, some of us enjoy fully covering ourselves as a form of self – exploration.
As we become more experienced artists, we demonstrated excellent gross motor skills by using our hands and feet to walk through the paint.
After all the fun we had with our body painting, we were able to hang our art work outside and use the remaining paint to draw shapes and letters on it with brushes. “A pointy A for my name”. 
“I made a circle ⭕️”.
We all had a great morning having the freedom to discover and choose ways to be creative.
Article13 – I have the right to find out and share information.
A peek at what’s been happening in our Cart Mill garden this week 😍
Whilst helping to water the plants in the greenhouse the children noticed that some of the plants were getting tall. We decided to repot the peas and the sunflowers and put them outside. 
“ I’m helping the peas to grow by watering them”
“ I don’t want the peas to fall down with the wind so I’m tying a cane onto the pea plant, but I might need some help to tie a knot”
The children noticed that the sunflowers were all different heights and asked to measure them. “That one’s really tall it’s bigger than all the rest”
“That’s two number 4s 44 “
After a few days our pea plants had some nasty looking holes in their leaves the children quickly realised that slugs were the culprit. They researched human slug traps online and found out that slugs love citrus fruit so we promptly cut some orange up and arranged them around the peas.
The children seen that the spring onions had also grown and looked ready to pull out. The salad leaves in the greenhouse were around the same stage and looked ready to sample to. The children thought they could make a nice salad with the leaves spring onion and we could add some parsley from our herb garden. We set about making our salad cutting chopping washing and we even managed to make a little dressing using orange juice a squeeze of lemon and lime.
“ It’s really hard to pull the spring onions out”
” I don’t think these leaves will taste nice” “ they smell yucky”
“ I like the taste of the parsley and the onions but not the lettuce “ The lettuce was the least popular ingredient of our salad. We can’t wait to try our peppers and tomatoes when they are ripe. Do you grow any fruit and vegetables in your garden? Do you have any suggestions to what other tasty things we could grow in our garden? probably not salad 😂
Article 28 Every child has the right to an education
Super Sports Day!
Today was Sports Day here at Cart Mill! Excitement has been building over the last couple of weeks and we have all been practicing our favourite races!
It was very exciting to arrive at our sports area and see all our races set up by Chris, our Active Schools Co-ordinator. Off we set to our first race. After a quick run down of what we needed to do it was time to ready, steady, GO!!!
We ran and jumped over the hurdles and then ran back to the start to see who could finish first! It was so much fun that our families wanted to join in too! (Well done mums!)
Next up was our obstacle course. We had to run up to the hula hoop, hop or star jump and then see if we could walk balancing a beanbag on our heads! It was a wee bit tricky but we took our time and demonstrated some fabulous balancing skills!
It was time for our flat race next! Some of us were a wee bit excited and forgot to wait for the ready, steady Go. With a bit of practice, we soon got the hang of it! Who do you think was fastest!
Our final race was the egg and spoon race. We are very imaginative here at Cart Mill, so we decided to have our own version, the tangerine and spoon race!
Of course what better way to round up sports day than our super duper water slide!
It was so much fun to take turns sliding super fast down our slide. We discovered if Val gave us a wee helping hand, we went even faster! And more bubbles appeared the faster we went (there’s definitely a science experiment in there somewhere!).
After all the fun it was time to head back inside for a quick change, ice pole and to receive our certificates. We truly are sporting super stars!
A huge thank you to staff, Chris from Active Schools and to our fabulous families and children for making it such a memorable event.
Article 31 – the right to engage in play and recreational activities.
Billy’s Bucket
Today we enjoyed the book Billy’s Bucket, a story about a boy who wanted a bucket for his birthday! Using his wonderful imagination, he described all the exciting events that happened and the sea creatures that came to visit. After reading our story we decided to design our own buckets…
Then we thought about all the creatures we wanted in our own buckets….sharks, whales, sea lions!!
We thought our bucket was too little so we made an even bigger one in our water tray. After lots of discussion, problem solving and decision making, we decided to make our water red!
Reading a story has helped us develop our literacy skills, fuels our imagination and creativity and allows us to share ideas with our friends. We have demonstrated we can make decisions, problem solve, work together and lead our own learning. 😁
Article 28 You have the right to an education
We’re Going To School!
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.
Painting with passion
The children have been thoroughly enjoying exploring lots of vibrant colours in the gross motor art area.
Today the children chose the paint they wanted to use, along with the rollers and brushes. We gathered our resources and decided we would use different textures of paper. We began by talking about the different textures and how they felt.
“This is bumpy”
“This one is shiny and smooth”
“It bumpy”
“It’s rough too”
The children then chose whether they wanted to use the brush or the roller and began exploring with the colours and the textures to make some big art! They used their gross motor skills to make the big movements required to roll and brush on the paper. Working together, they all took turns swapping the resources and colours making sure that everybody got a shot of everything they wanted.
The children then decided to explore their colour mixing skills. As they mixed, they became more confident using their design process, they created new secondary and tertiary colours.
“ look purple”
“I made brown”
“I love orange”.
Our older children really enjoyed using the new paint tools to create vibrant and wonderful patterns, in the style of our featured artist “Steven Brown”. While our younger children enjoyed using their gross motor skills to make marks on the ground using a big space to expand their creative skills.
We used so many skills in our gross motor art area today without even realising because we were having so much fun creating our abstract art.
“I am using my hands”
” I am making lots of lines”
I am making my shapes different colours”
”I am making shapes and mixing the colours together”
Who knows what creations we might make tomorrow in our gross motor art area!
Outdoor Fun
So far this month we have had great fun outdoors where we have been developing our gross motor skills. We have done this through various activities from running in an empty garden, designing an obstacle course, to practicing our hopping and ball throwing and catching skills.
“I’m the winner!”
“Look I can do it!”
Using our creative imaginations, we turned our stage into a pirate ship! It was so much fun drawing our own treasure maps and using them to go on an adventure to find the treasure. “X marks the spot!” We climbed the mountain, crawled through the cave, balanced on the bridge, avoiding the shark invested waters below, to find the treasure.
“Shiver me timbers!”
As it’s nearly time for sports day we have been practicing running, balancing, waiting patiently for our turn, sharing equipment and cheering each other on!
Article 29 – I have the right to an education that develops my personality.
Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play.
Number Stones
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 😂”
