Budding architects and construction engineers!

It’s been a brilliant few weeks in our busy block area! A number of our 4&5 year olds have become expert architects and construction engineers! They are able to describe what they are going to build before they start, draw their own plan, demonstrate excellent problem solving skills when creating their fabulous models and then use our iPads to capture images to create a fabulous display of their work.

”I used lots of blocks. I did it like symmetry, the same on each side. We found a picture that looks like it on the iPad”.

”We made a high chair for the teddy to sit in to eat his lunch, and a bed for the dolly cos she was tired”.

”I builded my house. These are the walls. I made a table and chairs and bunk beds to sleep in”.

Our 2 & 3 year olds have had lots of fun exploring stacking, demonstrating excellent problem solving skills by investigating how the blocks turn, fit on top of each other and different sizes, shapes and weights.

It was so much fun to see how many we could put on top of each other before they fell over!

Through observing and learning from our more experienced children, our 2&3 year olds are at the early stages of creating their own bridges.  Although they much prefer using their friends creations for their cars and trucks!


To add further challenge and depth to their learning, our children were set a challenge to see if they could build a bridge to help our small world people cross the river safely!   This sparked some wonderful conversation, problem solving, creativity and teamwork! Our children designed their own village with a school, park, shops and lots of houses and constructed some wonderful bridges to allow our people to cross the river safely to “go to the shops and the park”.


“I builded a bridge. There’s crocodiles in the water!”
“Look the people can cross the river to get to the park and the shop”.

”This bit doesn’t fit. We need a longer bit. Why don’t we try this bit?”

It has been so much fun watching our children develop their design and creativity talents, we can’t wait to share our future creations with you!

Articles 28 & 29 – children have the right to an education, children have the right to an education which tries to develop your talents and abilities.

 

What can we create with clay?

Today in the clay area, the children enjoyed taking part in various model making, exploring different techniques to mould and design and also being kind and sharing with one another.

At cart mill we value the opportunities we have to make friends and be part of group experiences sharing our ideas and thoughts with one another.


We have been sharing and co operating with our peers and recognising how we can communicate with others in different situations.

The children then demonstrated how to use different techniques for moulding and creating in the clay area.


The children were able to create and develop using a variety of techniques in making things by hammering, rolling and cutting using different tools and materials.

The children then created their own models by using their curiosity and imagination to select different loose parts such as pebbles and sea shells.

”I made snails”

”My shells look like unicorns horns”

Glorious Gloop

Today at the malleable table the children chose to make gloop . They each had their own tray and took turns to add the ingredients; cornflour and water. The children used their hands  to mix the ingredients together till the gloop was ready.

“Mine is too thick I need some more water”

“Mine is watery so I need more cornflour”

The children then began to explore the gloop  using their hands  and fingers discussing the different the textures they could feel.

“It’s sticky”

“Mine is all gooey”

“I am going to add more water to make it slime”

“Mines is so soft”

“I like the feeling”

“It looks like milk”

“I made a line and it disappeared”

The  longer the children  explored they became intrigued why it was hard to touch but then when running through their fingers it changes textures and turns into liquid when picking it up. The children continued exploring the gloop and talking about the feeling of it.

“It’s hard and then turns to liquid”

“Water makes it loosen”

“Look it’s running through my hands”

“My handprint has just gone”

“Hard and then it’s just runs”

“It’s melting”

Little did the children know, they had performed a science experiment and had produced a non Newtonian fluid. Impressive!

Shell-tastic Friday!

Today in the garden the children have enjoyed exploring our magic bag full of special shells! No peaking!

We looked closely and noticed that there was lots of different patterns, colours, textures and sizes. The children had lots of interesting observations about the shells…

“That’s like a unicorn!”

“Look, I made a wee clam shell bed. It’s for a pearl fairy!”

The children used lots of mathematical language while exploring the shells, it was interesting to see the different ideas they all had. Some children enjoyed imaginative play and others liked sorting them into different groups…

“They’re the biggest. Because they’re so pointy!”

“Let’s put all the wee baby clams over here. The big ones can go over here with the unicorn horns. This is the pink side!”

The children had so many descriptive words to describe the shells including…

“It’s swirly whirly”

“Ooooohh it’s so jaggy!”

Loose parts is a great way to explore many areas for learning as it is such an open-ended experience. You can talk about size, shape, colour, patterns and much, much more. Make it whatever you want it to be about! What loose parts can you find in your home to explore?

Have a great weekend everybody! 🙂

Sewing the seeds… (of potatoes)

Today we decided to grow some potatoes! We rolled two tyres from the top of the garden all the way to the bottom practising our hand to eye co-ordination and balance. We put some top soil into the tyres and covered up the potatoes.


We wrote potatoes on our tyres practising our mark making skills.

We enjoyed planting the potatoes so we made a seed station, an area that the children could self select a pot and gardening tool and plant a seed to put into the green house to grow.

We made our own label so we could recognise our pot when we looked after our seeds, nurturing them to continue in their life cycle.

We hope our seeds will grow as well as our cucumber, tomatoes and peppers.

Article 28 You have the right to education.

Will the glove fit🧤🪡🧵

In the studio this week one of our children drew around her hands onto paper, then she cut them out and decorated them. This sparked an idea “I want to make some gloves”

Using her problem solving skills she decided the paper would just rip if we tried to put it on her hands but she could use her paper hands to draw around and use some material. All of a sudden, she had a template!

“I want to sew my gloves for school, will I have a enough time before I go?

Once she selected and measured her material she had to make sure it was big enough for the size of her hand.
Mastering fine motor skills and the hand grip required to hold  and thread the needle, she got to work sewing. Well done!

We found a pair of gloves to help us problem solve how we were going to create our gloves. We discovered that the hands that we drew around didn’t match. They have to be symmetrical to be able to make the glove. We began sewing the glove onto the other material to cut around it after.

With a a little of help holding the fabric our super glove designer was able to sew all the way around the fingers. After a lot of hard work and concentration we tried the glove on to see if the glove fits.
The glove fits 🤩 Amazing Work!

“I need to make another glove because 2 gloves make a pair”

Sewing helps children understand the creative process, develop fine motor skills, improve their concentration, and learn how to work with their hands. This can help them become more independent and self-motivated.

Article 29 – You have the right to education which tries to develop your personality and abilities as much as possible and encourages you to respect other peoples rights and values and to respect the environment.

New and improved wormery

Following on from our last up-cycling project, we can now say we have finished fixing our broken wormery.

The children have worked so hard over the past couple of weeks using the tools and their problem solving skills to put it back together. They worked as a team to decide what they would use and what tools would work best.

“This small bit is too small”

“ We could use this long piece of wood on the side”

“we need a little nail and a hammer to put it on we don’t want to break the wood in half”

“What does this do? it has a bubble in it”

We learned that the spirit level indicates whether a surface is ‘Level’ or ‘plumb’.

“What does plumb mean?” We researched it and found out that ”Plumb means that the surface is sitting straight, it is vertical” This meant that we could check the sides were running straight up and down. We also used the spirit level to check the wormery was level across the top and bottom. We found out this is horizontal!

Every tinker table experience is different, even if it seems the same. We learn new vocabulary every day and learn skills that we can transfer into our everyday life, especially as we get older.

Using a wormery for compost is an easy and environmentally-friendly way of turning food waste in to nutritious compost to feed your garden.

Now we just need find some worms to come and live in it and make up its bedding! 🐛

Cart Mill School

The children have been very excitedly discussing starting school which sparked us to create a little school in our role play area. The children have been really enjoying playing the role of the teacher, taking the register and making sure everyone has ordered their lunch.

We are enjoying packing our bags, getting dressed up and practising writing letters.

We have even created our own school rules. We decided the most important one was ‘Listen to the teacher’!

A big thank you to the parents who donated bags, pencil cases and uniforms to make this possible for the children 👍

UNCRC- Article 29- You have the right to education which tries to develop your personality and abilities as much as possible.

Music with Michelle

What a week it’s been in our Noisy/Quiet room this week. First we had the wonderful dancing talents of Peters mum who put on a dance class for our children. We learned so many new dance moves. It was so much fun.

And today we had the wonderful musical talents of another one of our mums. Her name was Michelle and she told us how she was a opera singer. She also told us how she teaches people how to play the piano.

Michelle had a beautiful voice and it was so lovely to see her sing and play the piano.
My personal favourite was when she sang “tale as old as time” from the Beauty and the Beast movie.
She played some classical musical on the piano and it was so lovely to hear it played so well.
We also joined in with some dancing, showing off our moves we learned  on Tuesday.

We would like to extend our thanks to Michelle for getting our piano tuned for us, it definitely sounds 100% better.

I would like to also send my personal thanks for all the volunteers that came into nursery to join in with my intergenerational project. It’s been great having so many visitors in our centre, teaching our children new things.  Children learn best when having fun and this summer it has definitely been fun.

Making our own wasps and their nests….

After exploring our real wasps nest last week we have now created our own nests. We made our very own paper mache nests.

We blew up our ballon’s and used glue and old newspapers to stick all around the balloon. We got quite sticky !


We had to let them dry overnight and then did it all again to make them really hard. The boys and girls then gave them a coat of yellow or black paint. “ Mine looks like a wasp”.

The children were able to self select their own resources to  add to their nest after painting them. My nest is going to be very yellow. We also found some textured paper which looks like the little holes that the wasps climb in and out of. The nests are looking really great now. Well done.

Everyone had so much fun making their own flying wasps. We had to measure , fold , colour and cut the paper then add a paper clip to help it fly . The children worked out that if you stood a bit higher up the wasps would fly better , but we had to be careful so we didn’t wobble and fall off !.

After all that hard work we had a try at directing our bee bot 🐝 wasp. We went forwards, backwards we had a practice with right and left . Some of our 🐝 wasps even manage to go down a ramp. Who knew that wasps could be so much fun .

Article 13-  You have the right to find out things and share what you think with others.

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