Expressive Arts

Creative Art inspired by famous artists đŸ„°

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Today we studied some artists that use repetition and pattern in their art work.  For example Gustav Klimt, The tree of life,  Andy Warhol, and his Marilyn Monroe print. Yayoi Kusama is one of the most famous pattern artists of today she used semi circle brushstrokes to create  lace like patterns  to cover her canvas and imply an expansion into infinity. Looking and talking about these amazing artists inspired  some of the children to create their very own works of art using pattern.  The children self selected their own paint and resources we even tried acrylic paint which  we found out can be very messy. 😂

“I know the names of all these shapes, Im going to put the colours and shapes into the pattern” ”Mine is like a lace pattern “ “ I think the colours on my painting are lovely “


“I’m going to make a shape pattern “ “ I’m choosing a star to start “ I’m going to paint with the pom-poms” “ They make circle marks”

Some of the children chose to stick their shapes down to make a pattern and then paint over the top others did free style patterns and prints.

“ The string is tricky to get off” “ I’m cutting the ribbon to make stripes on my canvas” “I love my painting “

“ I’m wrapping string around mine to make it stripy” “ I’m putting lots of different sized circles on my canvas, like Kandinsky “
The children’s canvas paintings are beautiful well done everyone I think they are so good that we should display them in the studio.

Baking, Snack

Homemade banana muffins for snack 😋😋😋

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Today the children made banana muffins for snack to share with their friends. This is helping develop their sense of responsibility and the pride they feel in looking after others.

First aprons on and hands washed, table cleaned ready to start..

Then we mashed up the bananas helping develop our fine motor muscles

Then we measured our ingredients helping develop our numeracy and problem solving skills..3 scoops of gluten free flour

We carefully put our mixture into the cases

Then we shared the muffins with all our friends
.delicious 😋😋😋

Article 28 I have the right to an education.

Digital Technology, Social Studies, Technologies

Our emotions😀😱đŸ€ȘđŸ˜±đŸ«ŁđŸ„±đŸ˜ĄđŸ˜ł

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This week at the malleable area the children have been using their creative imaginations to mould our play dough into different things.

“I made a big worm, I rolled it with my hands”
“look I made my ear in the play dough, I lied down like this”

”I made a smiley face”

The smiley face sparked a conversation about the different faces we could make.

”can I show you my silly face”

The children used the iPad to take a picture of the different faces they could make, they even took a picture of Carly’s silly face but we won’t bore you with that.

Each child made a different face and we discussed what they were and why we might feel these ways. Using facial expressions we can begin to learn and recognise different feelings and emotions that we can feel and find solutions to understanding and dealing with them.

”some of the new boys and girls get sad faces when they just come to nursery, now they have happy faces”

We will continue exploring emotions in different ways at the malleable table, it is a very important way of communication especially for children as they don’t often understand their feelings.

Outdoor Learning

Muddy movers for everyone.

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Today we have had lots of fun exploring our balancing skills.

To do this we set up our muddy movers obstacle course using the loose parts in the garden.

Today we started with lying the planks of wood on the floor to allow our younger children time to practice and develop their confidence in walking along the plank without falling off.

After a few times around the course we made great progress and became more confident in ourselves.

As more of our older children joined the obstacle course we needed to make it a bit more challenging. The children helped choose a different layout to help further develop their balancing skills. We found a plank that was flat on one side and round on the top, which made it a bit tricky to walk along. We had to stretch our arms out wide to help us gain our balance. It was very tricky but with lots of practice and a little help from our friends we did it!

To challenge our balance skills even further, we added two planks of wood onto the tyres. This supported the planks but gave it a bit of movement and made it bouncy.

“Its a bit wobbly”

The obstacle course is a great way to challenge gross motor skills and to demonstrate how to use the equipment safely, share space and take turns.

Article 29 – Your education should help you use and develop your talents and abilities. It should help you learn to live peacefully, protect the environment and respect other people.

 

Article 31 – you have the right to play and rest.

 

Block building, Social Studies

Welcome to our block play! đŸ§±

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Today in the block area the children have been exploring the first two stages of block play, carrying and stacking. These stages allow children to carry the blocks around and use their senses to feel different shapes and weights and begin to explore building by stacking blocks vertically to create towers and horizontally to form rows.

Froebel block play has 7 stages, the children are starting at the beginning as for some of our children we are exploring the block area for the first time. For our older children, this gives us the opportunity to become role models and share our previous knowledge and skills.

The children worked together to carry the blocks to where they wanted to go, great teamwork everyone!

Then we used our knowledge and problem solving skills to create our stacking towers, some children used large blocks, some used small blocks. We remembered our safety rules and didn’t build our towers any higher than our necks.

  

Block play helps children to learn to take turns and share materials, develop new friendships and co operate with others. It also allows children to develop their special awareness and develop their risk assessment skills.

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Exploring the Cart Mill Garden

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This week in the garden we have had lots of learning experiences to take part in. Take a look at what we have been up to.

Duplo Rockets

We used Duplo blocks to build our own space rocket.  First we planned out our rocket on paper and got ready to build. Once we had built it we used different lengths of rulers to measure how tall our rockets were.  We have been learning different mathematical language such as centimetres, tall, short, tallest and shortest.  We were also practicing counting up to and back from 10 ready for blast off!!

Sunflower Harvest

The sunflowers that the children have grown this summer have come to an end. We decided to harvest the seeds and dry them out ready to plant next week. We looked at different parts of the plant and studied the head.  The children used the tweezers developing their fine motor skills to pull out the seeds from each head.  We will place them somewhere safe to try and store them for next years planting.

Chalk Mark Making

The children have been using the chalk to write and draw on the ground. They have created everything form spiders webs to beetles with 10 legs!  We even drew round our friends and looked to see who was the biggest and who was the smallest. Some of our children have also practiced writing their letters.

Obstacle Course

The children have helped to build different layouts using our loose parts this week. The obstacle courses help to challenge our gross motor skills. We have also been learning to manage our risk and ask for help on the more difficult parts.

What another fabulous week in the Cart Mill garden. I wonder what we will get up to next week?

 

Article 12 – Respect for the views of the child

Article 31 – Leisure, play and culture

Article 29 – Goals of education

 

 

Outdoor Learning

Outdoors fun đŸ€©

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This week in the outdoor area, the children have had lots of fun investigating different problem solving techniques through their play.

Some of the children really enjoyed posting the polydrone, so we came up with a fun game where we could all take turns posting them, and practice sharing our resources as a team.

The children came up with great suggestions


”if we put the tyre at the bottom, then it might not topple?”

“I’m a giant! I can see all the way to the bottom”

Some of our children needed a little hand to reach, but were very resourceful, using the crates from the muddy movers obstacle course. Great idea 💡

We posted so many polydrone that we filled the pipe up all the way to the top


“We’ve got to tip it out now. Big CRASH!”

“ready, steady, GO!”

Some children even decided to see if it would slide down to the bottom a different way after we had tipped it over


”it might get stuck.”

”I’m so strong”

“Got them! It’s like flying”

Sharing and turn taking are great life skills to learn, especially when it’s through fun games! Keep up the great work boys and girls đŸ‘đŸ€©

 

 

Expressive Arts

Creating movement in the science area

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Today in the science area we tried out a new experiment. How do we make our caterpillars 🐛 move. Firstly we had some small pieces of paper roll and drew on our caterpillar 🐛.

The best way to make a caterpillar shape was to roll the paper round a pencil this was quite tricky to manage !  ( we had a little help). And then with a squish and a squeeze we pushed our caterpillar off the pencil.

We were now ready to create the magic movement. We used our pipettes to drop a few drops of water onto them and they grew bigger, wiggled around and it just “growed so fast”.

The boys and girls noticed they were different sizes and wanted to make their own caterpillar families. They discovered using different sizes of paper towel made mummy,daddy,baby caterpillars. “This looks like the big one”.

Some of the children enjoyed putting colours on the paper towels , then adding water then watched as the shapes and patterns appeared. “ Mine is like the sunset in the sky “.

Who new a piece of kitchen roll could be so much fun . We used our fine motor skills also  named shapes and colours and even did some measuring . Well Done.

Article 13 – You have the right to share and explore through learning experiences.

Literacy

Bubbly fun washing our babies!

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Today in the Home room the children were asking to wash their babies and their babies’ clothes! We got basins of water and added lots of bubbles to make it fun for our babies. We got some sponges and towels ready! First, we had to take off the clothes that the babies were wearing!

Then it was time for the fun part! Using the sponges, we gave our babies a lovely clean!

We tried very hard to keep the babies faces out of the water.

”I have lots of bubbles in my bath!”

”I have a baby sister!”

The children loved the feeling of the water and the bubbles running through their fingers. This can be very relaxing for some children.

”My baby is all cleaned and sparkly now!”

Once the babies were washed the children dried them with the towels.  They all took great care when doing this.

The children wanted to wash some of the babies clothes that looked dirty! They used soapy water and dipped the clothes in, they gave them a good squeeze at the end to get all the water out!

Some of the children wanted to put some clothes into the washing machine to get them clean!

”I have one of these in my kitchen!”

Now that we had a big pile of wet clothes the children hung them, on the washing line to dry! We enjoyed using our fine motor skills to squeeze the pegs!

“I help my Mummy with the pegs at home!”

The children left the washing to dry, put clean clothes on their babies and gave them lots of cuddles.

This is such a great activity which the children really enjoy doing.  The role play helps the children to make sense of the world around them by re-enacting what they see their parents doing. This also helps to develop their social, emotional and verbal skills whilst having great fun!

Expressive Arts

Creative Cloud Dough

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Today in our malleable area the children chose to make cloud dough..  There are two different ways to make cloud dough,  so we decided to try both and see which one works the best  We gathered our bowls and began to take turns to add our first ingredient. First of all it was 2 scoops of cornflour and then 3 squirts of shaving foam or conditioner.

The children then used their gross motor skills to mix the ingredients together. During this time the children described the various textures they good feel.

“It’s so sticky”

“Mine is flakey”

”It gooey”

The children then made some predictions of what ingredient they could add more of to make the texture smooth. We continued to mix and experiment with our ingredients  until it became smooth and mouldable.

“Mine is soft like my teddy”

“I love squashing it”

“It’s like snow”

“Fluffy”

The children came to the conclusion that the cloud dough with conditioner was better.

shaving foam

“it crumbles”

” it’s like snow”

conditioner

”it all stays together”

”it’s smooth”

 

The children began to explore with the cloud dough using their hands. They began creating their own ideas using their imaginations and communicating with each other describing what they were creating. They then added some loose parts to help detail their masterpiece

“pirate Ship”

” a face”

”I made a circle”

” I have made sand and shells”

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