Loose parts fun đŸ€©

Today the children have enjoyed being creative in the loose parts area. We explored different patterns including numbers


Shapes


and some letters too…

“I want to do a S. That’s in my name”

“The pipe cleaners will work, because they’re straight lines.”

Some children even loved making something completely different all together, like the Scotland flag!

“the peg is for the wee stick on the flag. How can I do the triangles for the inside? I know, why don’t I squish the pipe cleaners?”

The children loved being creative with their patterns, and showed really great problem solving skills when choosing their materials. They were able to recognise patterns that included straight lines as well as more curved lines, and choose their loose parts to explore this. Great work everyone!
What can you make out of loose parts at home? We would love to see your ideas.

 

The tinker table is open for 2023

The boys were making a big super bat motorbike this morning and they decided to make a smaller version at the tinker table.

They drew up some plans
..drawings of what they wanted to make and how they were going to make it.

They choose the materials they needed.

 

They used hammers, nails, g-clamps, spirit levels glue and a variety of other materials.

They were very careful when using the hammer and recalled our safety rules before starting.

They decorated their fabulous models using their own designs and creativity.

Everyone showed a high level of concentration and level of engagement, developing their self help skills and independence.

Look forward to all their exciting designs coming home soon 😁

 

Rainbow 🌈 Puddles

Today in the garden we had lots of puddles and yesterday we had seen a lovely rainbow in the sky. So, we decided to try and make our own rainbow using chalk and the puddles. We had to put wellies on for this! We chose the colour we wanted, dropped them in the puddles and squashed the chalk with our feet.

We had to practise our jumping and balancing skills for this. “I made a violet colour in my rainbow”. The girls and boys wanted to add more water, developing their filling and pouring skills and making different patterns with the chalk. “Mine looks like a unicorn”.

We also added in other resources to create different patterns. This helped the children to practice their mark making. I can use the brush and I can use the paint brush (mop).

Now we have discovered what happens when you mix water and chalk . We look forward to our next mixing with water experiment!

Cart Mill Christmas Concert

We had a very busy day today, hosting two fabulous Christmas concerts. Both started off with a welcoming hot chocolate, complete with cream and marshmallows and what else, but a mince pie đŸ„§.

This gave parents the chance to chat and catch up with each other before our first indoor concert since 2019.

It was so nice to have such a busy centre, filled with the chat of families.

The children have been practising their songs all month and the hard work and rehearsals paid off as they were magnificent.

The staff have worked so hard with everyone and our families were treated to the Christmas favourites, We Wish You a Merry Christmas and of course Jingle Bells, as well as a few other songs.

Once the children had finished, we decided it was so good, we would sing it all again but this time we decided the grown ups should join in too!
Thank you all for joining us for our concerts today, we loved having you back in the centre and hope you agree with us that our Cart Mill children are super talented!
For anyone who finished up with us today, please have a wonderful break with the people you love and we will see you next year.

Santa visits Cart Mill!

Today at Cart Mill we got to wear our pyjamas to nursery! All the children loved showing off their cosy warm pyjamas.

We watched a short video of Santa outside Cart Mill which got the children very excited! Some of the children heard bells ringing and spotted Santa in our garden! He had arrived at nursery to see us all!

The children went in groups to see Santa and they all got a gift and their photo taken! Santa was so happy to meet such lovely, polite children!

After the excitement of seeing Santa we had some chilled time and got comfy with cushions and blankets on the rug and watched some Christmas Mickey Mouse!

We then had plenty of energy for some Christmas dancing! We copied the elves on the board and made up our own unique dance moves!

What a great fun day we all had, getting in the festive spirit. We are all so excited to share our wonderful singing with you at our concert tomorrow.

The holidays are coming ⛄

Today in the studio the children have been super busy decorating the ginger bread house they had made the previous week, writing letters to Santa to send off to the North Pole and making baubles at the clay table.

The children had been talking about sending letters to Santa, so we created our own Santa’s station were the children cut, collaged and mark made their letters.

”Will this go to the North Pole”

”I’m going to write merry Christmas”

Everyone was working together to decorate our ginger bread house with loads of loose parts.

“It’s all finished”

Over at the clay table the children were making their own baubles to  hang on their Christmas trees, they were squeezing rolling and cutting. After they had made their baubles they decorated them with paint and coloured sand.

Here are the children’s fabulous work!

 

Bookbug around the Christmas tree 🎄🎄🎄

Today Bookbug joined us around the Christmas tree for some festive songs and stories.

We passed Bookbug and toy Santa round the circle so all our friends could have a hug and a squeeze 👍


We bounced Bookbug and Santa as high as we could and that made us all giggle!

We had a special request for the story ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ which made us all very excited 😁

We wished all our friends a ‘Merry Christmas’ which may or may not have been a practice for next week đŸ€«

When it comes I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and look forward to seeing you all in 2023 đŸ„°

Frosty Fun ❄

It’s been a cold and frosty morning in our garden this week. We have wrapped up warm and have been taking a winter walk around our garden exploring the frost and ice in our garden.

We have seen some frozen spiderwebs on our play house and enjoyed looking at the patterns the spider had created in his web.

We found icicles on our bike wheel they were very cold to touch but looked really interesting with different sizes and shapes of icicles .

We listened to the sound of the ice and grit crunch under our feet as we walked.
We discovered our obstacle course was all covered in frost and had to be extra careful. We learned how to risk asses our own play.

Our water tub was full of ice chunks we could pick up and investigate.

Today we decided we wanted to play In the snow. So we made our own. We used a mixture of shaving foam and cornflour to create snow.
 
It was fun mixing the shaving foam and cornflour together but it was a little messy but we love getting messy.


When we made our snow some of our children were mark making in it, creating shapes, patterns or even making letters.

“ I can make a snowman”

”Its’s cold like real snow”

“You can make a snow storm”

Some of our children used paint brushes to create marks and patterns.

Some of our children wanted to use different shape and sized containers to try pouring and filling the snow and transporting them to different places.
It’s been a different week in our garden this week but we still had the best kind of fun.
I wonder what the weather will look like in our garden next week? Will there be real snow for us to play in?

 

Dancing Raisins

This morning our little scientists have been carrying out more experiments and making predictions about the outcomes. We are learning about forces and describing their effects.

We started by filling three glasses- one with still water, one with fizzy water and one with super fizzy limeade. We then made predictions about about what would happen if we put a raisin in each of the glasses.


We then dropped the raisins in the glasses to test our predictions and were amazed by the results.

Through a previous bubble experiment, we have learned that bubbles have air called carbon dioxide in them. It is these bubbles that are attaching on to the raisins and making them float but when the bubbles pop the raisins fall back to the bottom as they are denser and heavier than water. This makes the raisins look like they are dancing. We then continued to add more raisins and discovered that the smaller ones were lifted up by the bubbles more easily.

”The bigger ones are heavier and they just make the bubbles pop.”

If you have some sparkling water and raisins in the house, please try this at home and share your findings with us @cartmillcentre

 

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