Expressive Arts

Nature painting 🌹🌷🌸

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Yesterday in the studio we were talking about our gardens, today the children thought about what we had in the garden that we could use inside…

We had a look around the garden to discover things we could use as ‘nature’s paintbrushes’

We recycled our vegetables at snack and used our celery, cabbage and carrots to create patterns.


We chose the paint we wanted to use, making our own decisions and gaining confidence and ownership.

We recycled some old wallpaper and put it to great use giving us space to explore and create. Everyone came up with their own patterns and designs.

What different resources do you have at home. Why don’t you excitement and find things to create wonderful designs and patterns?

Article 31 You have the right to play and relax by doing things like sport, music and drama.

Snack

From farms to our tables 🥕🥔

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This week we set up our farm in the small world area. The children brushed the floor and made it all clean and tidy to start. They added artificial grass and blocks round it to make the fence so the animals couldn’t escape onto the road. We added some wooden people to act as the farmer and the families who live and work on the farm.

Then the animals came out to play.

We had a chat about what we already know about farms.

“What do you know about farms?”

“They have animals like cows and sheep, that eat grass”

“My horse eats carrots”

“Farms have vegetables”

“My daddy  bought carrots from the shop I had them for dinner”

We explored the different vegetables, feeling and smelling them and peeled and chopped them.

“Big potato, small potato”

I asked the children if they knew how the vegetables get from the farm to the shop.

They seemed unsure so we watched a video called farm to fork.

After we watched the process of growing vegetables on the farm, then being transported to the shops before getting to our tables. The children used the vegetables they had peeled and chopped and “planted” them in the soil. They are very keen to grow their own vegetables in the garden when the weather is a little warmer so we can use them for snack.

The children used the carrots, celery, and cabbage to chop up for a lovely snack, they also added melon, blueberries and orange.


“snack is very yummy today”

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Pancake Tuesday Celebrations!

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Today at Cart Mill we took part in all the pancake fun and made our own pancakes. In true Cart Mill style we decided to cook them a little differently….using our camp fire!

First we needed to make the pancake batter. In a small group we looked for a recipe using technology.  Then we gathered our ingredients.

We needed:
1 and a half cups of gluten free flour

1 egg

1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda 

1 cup coconut milk 

Take a look at the pictures below.  We even had help from one of our mums who was in for stay and play.

We measured out the ingredients following our recipe and made our delicious pancake batter ready to cook.

Next step was cooking them with Val on our fire pit. In small groups we followed our campfire rules to keep ourselves and others safe. We took a seat on the logs around the campfire and got ready to watch. 

First we watched Val light the fire 🔥

Next Val started to cook our delicious pancake batter.  We watched closely for when we could see bubbles on the top. That’s when you know they are ready to turn over.

Yum yum! Look at these delicious pancakes. We thought they were very tasty and ate them all up. 😃

 

Article 28
You have the right to education.

Uncategorized

Let’s get painting!

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Today in the studio a group of our children selected materials to paint. They choose rollers and a selection of different coloured paints. They displayed good understanding of the rules in the studio and put on aprons before they began to make their creations.

Using different rollers they created different patterns. Below are some pictures and comments from the children. 

“It’s a zig zag”

“It’s got lots of dots”

“I wavy like the beach”

“Squiggles”

We then added in paint brushes and let the children explore their fine and gross motor skills to create their masterpiece.

Article 28
You have the right to education.

Expressive Arts

Sew much fun 🧵

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This week in the studio, we have been having lots of fun sewing and weaving. There were lots of volunteers to create DIY boards for us to practice our weaving skills.

We practiced our technique…

“you go over and under and over again! It’s tricky”

Some children enjoyed exploring different patterns while weaving…

 

”it’s like an M!”

Weaving is a great experience for children to develop little muscles as it is very intricate work, and these movements help  support the development of their fine motor skills.

After developing our little muscles, we put our creative hats on 👩🏼‍🎨

”I want to make a little cushion for my LOL doll”

This sparked some curiosity in the children, so we decided to explore it further.

“I want to chop my own stuffing for my little pillow.”

“I want to sew a button”

The children had lots of fantastic ideas to share…

“I’m going to make a bow”

“mine is like a little butterfly”

Sewing with children is great for many reasons, but most importantly it’s a really fun way to express ourselves. The children have been talking about making “purses” for “all their pennies”! I wonder what other wonderful role playing ideas we could come up with next week for the sewing area? We can’t wait to find out! Have a fabulous weekend everyone ☀️

Outdoor Learning, Special Event

Keep Scotland Beautiful

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At Cart Mill we have entered into the Keep Scotland Beautiful Pocket Garden competition. So, today the children got busy planting a variety of different seeds, bulbs and cuttings.

We started by gathering our tools, pots, seed trays, compost and watering  can.

Before we opened the seed packet we had a guess at the size, shape and colour of the seeds, with some great guesses” I think they are small” “ I think they are pink”  “ I think they are round” and I think that some of the boys and girls have done this before.


After making a hole with our finger we planted the “tiny” seeds and we filled the watering can because we know that plants need the “sun and water” to grow.

Next we went on to plant some daffodil bulbs, this time we used a bigger pot and had a go at lining them up from smallest to biggest.

We planted two pots of daffodils and decided to try an experiment by placing one pot in the greenhouse and the other outside. We want to see if there will be any differences, maybe one will grow bigger than the other!

Finally we potted the cuttings we were kindly given by Ben’s Mum and gave them to Derek to brighten up the studio.

A lovely addition to our Family Centre, thank you!

Here is a link to the competition if you would like to find out more about what we are doing in the garden- https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/media/1570993/opp-pocket-garden-comp-guide-2023-final-211222.pdf

 

Literacy, Snack

Fun Fruits

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Today we have been looking at different fruits. At snack time we have discovered how juicy some of our fruits can be. We chose the fruits we thought would be the juiciest; strawberries, lemons, limes and oranges.


We then cut our fruit in half this gives us two pieces . The orange was a bit difficult to cut and we had to use the knife in a sawing motion. “ Look I did it “

The next job was to use all our muscles and push the fruit onto the squeezer and when we twisted it round and round the juice started to fall into the container. We enjoyed watching all the colours drip into our glasses . “ I like the red one “ “ orange is my favourite “ .

We discovered that some of the bigger fruits produced more liquid than the smaller ones. The children were able to look at the glasses we had filled and put them in order. “ The strawberry one is the littlest “ and the “orange is the biggest”

After all the juice was squeezed we practiced our pouring skills and filled our own glasses with juice so that we could enjoy some tasting.

We did have some funny faces when we tried the lemon and lime but the juices were all finished and enjoyed. We will look forward to some more exciting times with our fun fruits .

Outdoor Learning

Ball play

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This morning in the garden we have been practising our balls skills.

We started by setting up the baskets in the tyres and playing some basketball. We tried throwing the ball in to the basket and also bouncing it in.

We had great fun trying but some of us found this a little tricky so we decided to practise our throwing skills a bit more.

We practised throwing and catching and also bouncing and catching.  We learned that we need to make sure the other person is ready to catch before throwing and we need to have hands out and keep our eyes on the ball to catch it.

After this we put our skills to use and played cooperatively by making a circle and passing the ball to the person next to us.

We learned that we should throw under arm when passing to a person and we need to alter how hard we throw depending on how far away the other person is.

Brilliant ball work boys and girls ⚽️🏀⛹️‍♂️

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning, Trips and Outings

Framing Winter

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As our weather is crisp and cold we have been looking and discovering more about winter in the world around us and how we keep ourself warm during this chilly time. We asked the children what they knew about winter weather and got some lovely responses;

“It’s Cold” “

“I wear snow boots”

“My fingers go red”

“Frost makes beautiful patterns”


We decided together that we would enjoy exploring our local environment to see what effect the colder weather had on our world around us.

First we dressed appropriately for our walk, we put our warm jackets, hats, boots and some of us had cosy gloves to keep us extra warm .

We looked at how the trees looked a bit sad and cold as their beautiful big leaves have left them bare, some of the leaves were lying on the ground.

During our walk we collected some of the leaves, some sticks, twigs and stones to take back to Cart Mill

“Leaves are wet”

“ I have found the biggest stick”

On our travels we also spotted a deer and its family through the bare trees. We walked a little further and saw lots of sheep.
“Are there any baby ones?”
We discussed that baby lambs can be seen in the spring and that’s the next season after winter, so not long to wait now.

When we arrived back at the nursery we decided to create our own winter pictures using the resources we found. The children were very creative designing their own trees and snowflakes. A lovely way for us to show our fun winter walk time.

 

Expressive Arts

Really wild in the block area.

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This week in the discovery room we have been exploring the seven stages of block play. A lot of our children are at different stages of block play. This becomes evident during their spontaneous play when using the blocks.
Stage 1 is carrying. This this is the initial stage where children show interest in carrying the blocks or using them to hit together or make sound.

Stage 2 is Stacking. This is where the children begin to stack the blocks in a variety of ways. This is when the building begins.

This week the children have been showing a lot of interest in jungle animals. We decided to incorporate the animals into our block play.
This takes us to Stage 4, enclosures.
The children have been using the blocks to make homes, zoos and animal enclosures. The children have been working hard to create wonderfully exciting enclosures for their animals.

We have made small enclosures that animals can fit inside or on top.

We have made large 3D enclosures that fit different animals in different sections.

We worked on our own and together to create our builds.

We are very proud of the enclosure builds we created

Not only have we enclosed the animals, we enclosed ourselves. We built massive enclosures for us to play with the animals inside.


It’s been lots of fun this week. We put on some relaxing music to listen to on the iPad which had images of animals. Our children got very excited at seeing the animals they were playing with on the big screen.


We had lots of spontaneous learning opportunities through our week. We will continue to record our learning in our block area floorbook where we will be showcasing each of our stages of block play.

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