Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking

Creative Painting

June 26, 2024 Miss Keith Leave a comment

Today in the studio we decided to have some fun with the paint using our hands and feet! Firstly we laid down a clear shower curtain and chose colours of paint to “squirt” onto it.
How are we going to mix the colours together ? Using our problem solving skills we came up with some good ideas.
“We can roll around ! And I can use my feet . Be careful it is a bit slippy!”

We have developed our tactile and sensory skills from touching the paint and feeling it on our skin and between our toes. This also helps us develop gross motor skills and balance. We discussed colours and watched them mix together .

As we explore the paint, some of us enjoy fully covering ourselves as a form of self – exploration.
As we become more experienced artists, we demonstrated excellent gross motor skills by using our hands and feet to walk through the paint.

After all the fun we had with our body painting, we were able to hang our art work outside and use the remaining paint to draw shapes and letters on it with brushes. “A pointy A for my name”.

“I made a circle ⭕️”.
We all had a great morning having the freedom to discover and choose ways to be creative.

Article13 – I have the right to find out and share information.

Outdoor Learning

A peek at what’s been happening in our Cart Mill garden this week 😍

June 25, 2024 Miss Mitchell Leave a comment

Whilst helping to water the plants in the greenhouse the children noticed that some of the plants were getting tall. We decided to repot the peas and the sunflowers and put them outside.

“ I’m helping the peas to grow by watering them”

“ I don’t want the peas to fall down with the wind so I’m tying a cane onto the pea plant, but I might need some help to tie a knot”

The children noticed that the sunflowers were all different heights and asked to measure them. “That one’s really tall it’s bigger than all the rest”

“That’s two number 4s 44 “

After a few days our pea plants had some nasty looking holes in their leaves the children quickly realised that slugs were the culprit. They researched human slug traps online and found out that slugs love citrus fruit so we promptly cut some orange up and arranged them around the peas.

The children seen that the spring onions had also grown and looked ready to pull out. The salad leaves in the greenhouse were around the same stage and looked ready to sample to. The children thought they could make a nice salad with the leaves spring onion and we could add some parsley from our herb garden. We set about making our salad cutting chopping washing and we even managed to make a little dressing using orange juice a squeeze of lemon and lime.

“ It’s really hard to pull the spring onions out”

” I don’t think these leaves will taste nice” “ they smell yucky”

“ I like the taste of the parsley and the onions but not the lettuce “ The lettuce was the least popular ingredient of our salad. We can’t wait to try our peppers and tomatoes when they are ripe. Do you grow any fruit and vegetables in your garden? Do you have any suggestions to what other tasty things we could grow in our garden? probably not salad 😂

Article 28 Every child has the right to an education

Special Event

Super Sports Day!

June 24, 2024 Mrs Hannah Leave a comment

Today was Sports Day here at Cart Mill! Excitement has been building over the last couple of weeks and we have all been practicing our favourite races!

It was very exciting to arrive at our sports area and see all our races set up by Chris, our Active Schools Co-ordinator. Off we set to our first race. After a quick run down of what we needed to do it was time to ready, steady, GO!!!

We ran and jumped over the hurdles and then ran back to the start to see who could finish first! It was so much fun that our families wanted to join in too! (Well done mums!)

Next up was our obstacle course. We had to run up to the hula hoop, hop or star jump and then see if we could walk balancing a beanbag on our heads! It was a wee bit tricky but we took our time and demonstrated some fabulous balancing skills!

It was time for our flat race next! Some of us were a wee bit excited and forgot to wait for the ready, steady Go. With a bit of practice, we soon got the hang of it! Who do you think was fastest!

Our final race was the egg and spoon race. We are very imaginative here at Cart Mill, so we decided to have our own version, the tangerine and spoon race!

Of course what better way to round up sports day than our super duper water slide!

It was so much fun to take turns sliding super fast down our slide. We discovered if Val gave us a wee helping hand, we went even faster! And more bubbles appeared the faster we went (there’s definitely a science experiment in there somewhere!).
After all the fun it was time to head back inside for a quick change, ice pole and to receive our certificates. We truly are sporting super stars!

A huge thank you to staff, Chris from Active Schools and to our fabulous families and children for making it such a memorable event.

Article 31 – the right to engage in play and recreational activities.

Creativity, Literacy

Billy’s Bucket

June 21, 2024 Mrs Johnston Leave a comment

Today we enjoyed the book Billy’s Bucket, a story about a boy who wanted a bucket for his birthday! Using his wonderful imagination, he described all the exciting events that happened and the sea creatures that came to visit. After reading our story we decided to design our own buckets…

Then we thought about all the creatures we wanted in our own buckets….sharks, whales, sea lions!!

We thought our bucket was too little so we made an even bigger one in our water tray. After lots of discussion, problem solving and decision making, we decided to make our water red!

Reading a story has helped us develop our literacy skills, fuels our imagination and creativity and allows us to share ideas with our friends. We have demonstrated we can make decisions, problem solve, work together and lead our own learning. 😁

Article 28 You have the right to an education

Uncategorized

We’re Going To School!

June 19, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks our pre school children have been engaging in a transition programme alongside ‘David the Duck’ to support them in their transition to school.
We began by meeting David and introducing ourselves.

We discussed what we thought we might be going to learn at school.

We used emojis to share how we are feeling about going to school, we decided we are happy, excited and maybe a little nervous!

David showed us his school uniform and we talked about the different schools we are going to and what our uniforms might look like. We drew pictures of what we would like our uniform to look like.

David showed us his school bag and we talked about the things we would put inside our own school bags.

”We might need snack and lunch in case we get hungry.”

”We might need our wellies like at nursery.”

We also explored David’s pencil case and enjoyed looking at the different things inside.

We talked about how we could make new friends at nursery by asking questions about them. We played a game called ‘Getting To Know You’ where we rolled the ball to each other and shared information about ourselves.

”My favourite food is pizza”

”If I was an animal I’d like to be a jaguar.”

We wrote postcards to our teachers to help them get to know us a little better.

Finally we shared some of our favourite memories of our time at Cart Mill and hung them on our memory tree.

Good luck in your new adventures at school boys and girls!

Article 13 I have the right to find out things and share what I think with others, by talking, drawing and writing.

Creative movement, Creativity, Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Fun

June 13, 2024 Mrs MacRae Leave a comment

So far this month we have had great fun outdoors where we have been developing our gross motor skills. We have done this through various activities from running in an empty garden, designing an obstacle course, to practicing our hopping and ball throwing and catching skills.

“I’m the winner!”

“Look I can do it!”

Using our creative imaginations, we turned our stage into a pirate ship! It was so much fun drawing our own treasure maps and using them to go on an adventure to find the treasure. “X marks the spot!” We climbed the mountain, crawled through the cave, balanced on the bridge, avoiding the shark invested waters below, to find the treasure.

“Shiver me timbers!”

As it’s nearly time for sports day we have been practicing running, balancing, waiting patiently for our turn, sharing equipment and cheering each other on!

Article 29 – I have the right to an education that develops my personality.

Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Number Stones

June 12, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Over the past week we have been developing a range of skills at our play area. From counting to recognising numbers, shapes and patterns, Gross motor skills and writing stories we have experienced it all. The children have been so creative.

I observed the children playing a game at the clay table, they were drawing pictures in the clay with different clay tools and asking their friends to guess what they had made. One child wrote the number 4 in clay.

“Guess what I’m drawing it has a shell on it” – A snail

“I draw happy face”

“I did number 4, cause I’m 4”

This lead us on to writing numbers in the clay, we made number stones and decided to paint them lots of different colours. When the paint was dry we brushed over them with Pva glue and left them to dry. Finally using a black marker to make numbers stand out.

The children have used these number stones to lead their own learning. We have used our counting skills and number recognition to rearrange the numbers in order from 1-10.
They have played lots of different games with the number stones, one game involves the children laying the numbers out in order and closing their eyes 👀 I take one number stone away and they have to guess what number is missing. To make it more challenging we mixed the numbers up and before removing one.

“It’s number 4” Next we added in numbers 10-20 to add fun challenge to their learning.

“I’m doing it upside down and the wrong way round 😂”

Creativity, Imaginative thinking

Puppet Play

June 12, 2024 Miss Welsh Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks the children have been involved in activities relating to castles in the junk modelling area. As we come to the end of this activity, the children realised that the castle had no people living in it, so they wanted to make some characters for the castle.

First, we searched to see how to make puppets and what resources we had available in junk modelling. We found some lolly sticks and colourful paper to make our characters.

Some of the children chose to use glue to make their puppet and others used cello tape.

Then they dressed the puppets using colourful paper before giving the puppets a face, which gave the puppets their own personality.

“That’s the bones, otherwise he will fall apart”

The children came up with the idea of using a second lolly stick to give their puppet arms.

Children benefit from puppet making as it helps to develop their creative imagination. Some of the children played with the puppets in the nursery through role play and creating personalities for their puppets.

One puppet even got his very own castle.

This fun activity also increases communication and social skills.

Cart Mill Castle.

Article 28 – I have the right to an education.

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Sequencing stories

June 12, 2024 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

The children have been enjoying telling their own stories using the puppets which sparked us to learn more about how a story is structured. We have learned that a story needs a start, where we choose a setting and meet the characters, a middle, where we develop the story and an ending.

We have used familiar stories, such as The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff to help us understand how to sequence a story.

We have also been creating our own books using an online tool called book creator. Here is Erin’s version of The Billy Goats Gruff.

Some of the children even felt confident enough to create their own stories. Grace used the story prompt cards to choose a main character and a setting then created a wonderful story!

Some of the younger children have enjoyed using the pictures in the books as prompts and demonstrated great confidence when sharing a story within a group. We even have some budding illustrators among our two year olds.

UNCRC article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.