Please note Cart Mill chat will be coming out on Monday instead of tonight. We hope you all have a lovely weekend and we will see you all next week.
Welcome to our potion station today 🎃🎃🎃
Today in the garden we welcomed all the witches and wizards to our potion station …..
This developed our pouring and measuring skills, filling and emptying containers or cauldrons. Encouraging mathematical language how much do we need, do we need more or less?
Decision making….creating their own potions and deciding what they choose to go in.
Enjoying the outdoor sensory experience, the different smells and textures.
Working together and supporting each other’s learning.
Potions were for lions and unicorns fingers crossed some of these come true…. What potions can you make at home?
Article 28 Children have the right to an education
Marvellous Monday fun 👻🎃
As it’s Halloween next week we have a few themed learning experiences around the nursery. The children asked for a Halloween story and they chose Room on the Broom. “ It’s my favourite story” “ I wish I could fly on a broom in the sky.“ “I like the dog best in this story.”
The children used shapes to make spooky patterns and enjoyed mixing potions to use for magic spells. “ It’s fancy orange water I, wonder if the water will change to green If I put a green potion into it”
We made up a letter hunt game using familiar Halloween packaging. The children looked for a letter on the packaging then were encouraged to sound it out and mark it off their pumpkin worksheet.
“I can see a v that’s my Mums name begins with” “pumpkin starts with a p”
“Monster begins with an m look I have found it on my sheet” “ I have found lots of letters “ “ S for sweets, mmmmmm I do like sweets!”
Maybe you could think of some more fun Halloween activities we could do?
Baking Autumnal Cookies!
As the days grow shorter, there’s no better time to get creative in the kitchen with your little ones. Pumpkin cookies are not only a delicious treat but also a fantastic way to engage our children in hands-on learning. Baking helps develop fine motor skills, introduces basic math concepts, and encourages sensory exploration.
Using a freshly scooped pumpkin, the children removed the seeds and helped prepare it for roasting in the oven. Once it was perfectly cooked, Derek created a deliciously smooth pumpkin puree, ready to be used in our baking.
The first step of the recipe was measuring out all the ingredients. For early years children, this is a great opportunity to develop important math skills. Weighing and measuring help them understand quantities, recognize numbers, and begin to grasp basic concepts of volume and weight. Plus, they love the hands-on experience of using measuring spoons and scales! “We need 100” “2 big spoons”
With everything prepped, it was time to mix all the ingredients together, watching as the flour, spices, and pumpkin puree blended into a soft dough. The children took turns mixing and exploring the different textures. We even explored solids becoming liquids by melting the butter. “It’s like soup” “It’s hot”
Next, we shaped the dough into small balls, rolling them carefully with our hands, and placed them onto the baking tray, ready to bake in the oven. The excitement grew as the cookies began to take shape and the delicious smell of pumpkin filled the room!
All ready, look at our fantastic cookies snack 😃
Check out our easy recipe below and enjoy a sweet, memorable autumn activity with your little ones!
110g room temperature butter
(dairy free or regular)
165 g light brown sugar
100 g white sugar
120g pure pumpkin puree
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
270g gluten free all purpose baking flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2.5 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
0.25 teaspoon cinnamon
0.25 teaspoon salt
60 g chocolate chips
Article 1
Everyone under 18 has all these rights.
Article 28
You have the right to education.
Autumn treasure in the Clay area
Here at Cart Mill we know our children like to find little treasures when out and about. This week we have asked the children to collect some autumn treasure. This could be from a local park, woods or simply in your garden.
Our children have not disappointed us and have come in with bags full of leaves, sticks and twigs. These will be used as we explore the changing seasons through a variety of different experiences.
Today at the clay area we started off using the sticks and conkers to make marks in the clay. We discovered the conkers were smooth and some were very shiny. As we presses the conkers into the clay some of the children discovered that they looked like eyes. This naturally followed onto making some spooky faces.
As the children explore the clay they discussed their own experiences and shared their knowledge of autumn.
“My mummy and I went on a autumn hunt and I found an acorn it had a little top on it”
“It’s autumn today and all the leaves are falling off, falling down, falling down”
”There’s a seedling in the ground”
”it’s smooth”
The conker shell and the pine cone made lot of little holes when we rolled it over the clay. We also discovered some of the branches of the tree had little spikes. One child decided to use as vampire teeth.
“I’m using the stick to mark the blood on his face”
“My monster’s got 5 eyes”
We hope you like our spooky faces. There are still plenty of time to collect some autumn treasure. So please collect a bag from the main door before you come into the playroom. We would love to see you treasure. 🍁🍂
Halloween splat painting
Some of the children were chatting about Halloween this morning. Following their interest, we thought it would be a good idea to search the internet to look for some activities that we could do in our Gross motor art/mark making area in the garden.
We came across splat painting and thought this looked like it would be lots of fun. We chose some Halloween characters and printed them out and stuck them on to a large piece of card. Then it was time to choose our favourite colours of paint!
“I like the pumpkin, my mum said I can get one at the shop.”
“Can I choose the paint?”
“I like red paint.”
“ This is so heavy.”
“I’m using my big muscles to push the blue paint out.”
Next we went outside to the garden and found a good spot to hang our pictures up. Using different sized paint brushes, we dipped them into the paint and tried out lots of large movements to splat the card until it was covered in lots of different colours of paint. Forming a queue, we were able to take turns to move our bodies in different ways and splat the paint in different directions.
“I’m going to run so fast like Sonic.”
“Me too!”
When the card was covered in paint, we peeled the Halloween pictures off to see what we had created.
“Look, I can see the witches cat.”
“The witches cat is wearing a hat, oh that rhymes!”
“and the pumpkin.”
We had so much fun using large body movements to create a piece of art, while developing our gross motor skills.
Creative with paints!
The children have been exploring various different ways to express their creativity in the painting area this week. The children were very excited to discover special waterproof paper in the art area, which sparked lots of imaginative ideas!
Some children wanted to draw their pictures first using chalk, and copying it with paints
Others explored fun patterns using different resources…
The best part is, as the paper is waterproof, you can paint and clean as many paintings as you like!
“Taadaa!”
The children were keen to take their paintings home with them, so after some wonderful suggestions the children came up with a solution.
“Maybe if I put it on the big paper, it will stick?”
“It worked!”
“Great idea! I’m going to try it too”
The children worked so well as a team, helping their peers with fun suggestions and solutions. Keep up the great work everybody!
Let’s all go to the dough disco
We have been working hard in our playdough area to make the area fully self-service for our children. We have used visual aids to help our children know where all the ingredients are and what they are called.
We also have created a visual recipe board to give our children step by step instructions on how to make our playdough, to provide them with independence and a sense of ownership.
Even our younger children are enjoying this opportunity and learning the recipe.
Now that we have mastered our playdough making skills it’s time to work on our fine manipulative skills.
The “dough disco” is a fun way to move our fingers and extend our fine manipulative skills.
The dough disco teaches us some key moves such as,
“Squeeze it”
“Ball it”
“Pat it”
“Fingers dance”
Put all these moves together along with some fun music and it’s time to go to the dough disco, and get those fingers moving….
This is a great way to incorporate our fine manipulative skills while having fun with our playdough.
Theses key moves also help us when we are create models with our dough.
There are lots of dough disco videos on you tube if you would like to try it at home.
I wonder what we will do at the dough disco tomorrow.
Article 31 – “you have the right to play and rest”
What is STEM?
At the start of the new term we revamped our STEM area and have since been learning about the different areas of STEM and how they can connect together. First we started by asking ‘What is STEM?’ and the children had some great ideas;
”It’s magnets.”
”It’s doing the shapes.”
”It’s floating and sinking.”
”It’s science.”
I explained that STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths so they were absolutely right, it is all of those things. We have been having great fun exploring all the different areas…
Science and the magic of magnets…
We have been learning about forces and how magnets can hold and move metal objects. We mixed science and maths by counting how many magnetic toys we could hang from the large magnet before they fell off. We even used science to paint by putting a paper clip in the paint and using the magnets to drag it around from under the paper plate!
Science and engineering in the water tray…
We have explored the different properties of water, finding out how it can change from a solid to a liquid through ice play and have learned why some objects float on water and some will sink. We then used this knowledge to create our own boats. We started by using the foil, but soon found the water came on top and sunk our boats. Using our problem solving skills, we became engineers and worked together to find a solution. One of us realised that boats have sides to stop the waves crashing inside the boat. This inspired us to wrap the foil round our hands and voila, our boats could not only float but also carry cargo!
Maths in action…
Numbers, numbers everywhere!
Some of us were able to order the number cards from 0-20 and had a great time hopping along it, shouting the numbers as they went. We have also been reading number stories and practising recognising numbers from 0-10.
Next week we will start exploring technology through coding. As it is Maths Week Scotland, we will learn about using positional language as well.
Building a Zoo
In the clay area we have been exploring different animals shapes and sizes while creating our own animals.
Will reading Dear Zoo we talking about the different features of the animals. We noticed some had long necks, big ears, 4 legs or even no legs.
We introduce some animal shape models for the children to explore. The children had fun experimenting with different sized leaf’s and sticks and were able to create there own unique animal.
Once they were able to select their own leafs and sticks to create their chosen animal. The next step was to model the clay and transfer the sticks and leafs to create their very own animal to take home.
Here are some of the children’s creations along with their comments while making them.
“I’m making a giraffe this is its long neck”
“Its a horse”
“These little flower are for the eyes”
“He need a tail I’m going to cut it smaller”
“I’m making a rabbit”
”It’s got big ears”
