Monster Cress

After the success of planting our radish and pumpkin seeds last week the children wanted to do some more and as halloween is nearly here we decided to make some scary monster cress creations.

First we gathered all the items  we needed before starting to decorate our monsters.


We then carefully counted out five cotton balls each before gently placing them in the tubs and covering them with water.

The children worked on developing their fine manipulative skills by pinching and sprinkling our very small seeds on top

“the seeds are soo tiny”

Some of the children wanted to put their monsters inside and others wanted them in the greenhouse so we will now check to see how they grow in different areas.

Big Wild Walk 2022

This week is the Big Wild Walk week organised by the wildlife trust. It is used to raise money and awareness of the importance of protecting our wildlife. Adults are encouraged to walk 30 km over the week and children are to walk 3km as this is the same distance a hedgehog can walk in a night. We have used this as an opportunity to highlight the importance of caring for our natural world.
We started by discussing what we know about wildlife, what animals live in the forest and how to look after them.

“We can build wee homes.”
“We can make beds with leaves.”
“We can go a walk to check on them.”

Then we spoke specifically about hedgehogs and what we know about them. We also made our own hedgehogs using pine cones.

“Hedgehogs have little feet.”
“They’re really spiky”
“Hedgehogs like chestnuts.”

Then we went for a walk to see if we could find any hedgehogs having a sleep and decided to collect leaves while we were there.

When we got back we used our Autumn leaf spotter sheet to identify the leaves and discover which types of trees are in our forests.

If you like to join in you can find more information here;

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/bigwildwalk

Happy walking 🚶‍♀️ 😀

Leaf Man!

Today in the garden we have enjoyed reading the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.

The children loved hearing about the adventures the wind took Leaf Man on in the story.

After listening to the story the children enjoyed looking through the book and making up their own adventures!

Using the leaves and conkers we have collected on our local walks we made our very own Leaf Men. The children had great fun doing this.

“Mine has a smiley face made from conkers!”

“Look, my guy has cheeks and a tummy button!”

”Mine has a big nose sticking out!”

“The wind will blow him to space!”

“Spider-Man leaf!”  “He can to big jumps and kicks!”

“I’ve made a girl called Millie all using the conkers, she has a leaf hat!”

What great stories the children made up about their Leaf Men. The next time you see leaves blowing in the wind make sure to ask the children about their adventures!

Tinker table tools

Today in the Discovery room we have been learning what we can do with our tools. We have different stages of development and have experimented with resources that give the children their own challenges which helps them all build their confidence and self-esteem.

The children have worked well together as they discussed the different ways they could use the tools. “I am very strong “. While using the tools the children are developing their fine motor skills and hand and eye co-ordination skills.

We had fun finding out which resource was the hardest and which one was easier to hammer or screw in nails . “ I can hammer in nails they look like a face”

With a little help we were able to saw the cardboard tube into pieces this was a bit tricky. We did remember our safety rules  “ I will keep my fingers over here”

 

As always at Cartmill we like to recycle as many materials as possible and after removing all the nails from our pumpkins we chopped them into pieces and decided to give them to birds for lunch.

We look forward to our next introduction to new tools and equipment and what we can build.

 

 

Rangoli Patterns

Today in the Discovery Room we have been talking about Diwali, in particular Rangoli patterns.

We learned that Rangoli patterns are traditionally made using coloured rice or dry flour which was mixed with turmeric and other natural colours. They can be created using different geometric shapes in the form of flowers, petals, stars or lanterns.

Families celebrating Diwali create beautiful Rangoli patterns and place them near the entrance of their homes to welcome Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, in the hope this will bring them good luck and prosperity.

We decided we would use our fabulous knowledge of shapes, patterns and positioning to create our very own Rangoli patterns.  We had a look to find some Rangoli patterns to give us some inspiration!

It was lots of fun choosing which loose parts we would use to create our patterns.  Of course we had to make sure we  chose lots of different colours and the shiny shapes and coloured gems were definitely our favourites!

Using the patterns as a guide, we carefully chose which loose part would fit best and carefully positioned them on our patterns.


“I’m using the gem. It’s a circle.”

”I like the shiny shapes. That’s one’s a diamond.”

”I put the button in the middle. It’s a big circle.”

“I like the buttons the best.”

”I found a shiny one.”

It was a bit tricky to fit some of the loose parts in as they were the shape! Working together, we were able to solve the problem and use some of our triangles to make a diamond!

Don’t our Rangoli patterns look beautiful.  Next time we are going to draw and create our own!

 

 

Halloween sensory play

Today we were exploring our senses and developing our motor skills in our Autumn/Halloween sensory tray. We are getting in the Halloween spirit. 👻🎃

This is a great experience for our youngest children to get in and explore different sensations on their hands and develop their hand muscles . For our older children it’s a great way to develop their fine motor skills and writing skills as they can use their fingers or a tool such as a pencil, paint brush, or other item to draw, write letters, or form numbers in the sensory tray.


“I’m drawing a pumpkin in the orange rice”

We added some cornflakes, pasta, leaves, conkers and some spooky halloween characters. We then added paintbrushes and tweezers to see what we could do with them.

”see I can pick the conker up”

“I can get the skeleton”


“it feels hard and crunchy”

”It sounds like rain at night time”

The children then used the buckets as cauldrons and made their own  witches brew while telling spooky halloween jokes.

Today we had fun painting in the style of Kandinsky😁


Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract art he is known for his inventive use of of colour and one of his most well-known images was a colour study with concentric circles. The children decided to recreate this famous piece of art work putting their own unique spin on it. First
We went on a circle hunt around the nursery to find objects we could use for our outdoor Kandinsky painting. “There’s lots of different shapes in here look here are two circles we can use” “ Look this would make a good circle shape it could also be for a robots eye” “I have shapes we could use to paint circles on my tower” “ cardboard tubes would make good circles”

We had great fun using the objects we found to make our circle designs developing our gross motor skills. The children were very creative making their painting. “ I want to use the plunger” “ I think the cardboard tube makes the best circles” “


“Im using the blue paint and the tube to make a big circle then I’m putting a smaller one inside it” “Circles, everywhere big ones small ones and tiny ones too”


The children were excited about their finished art work and we all think it looks amazing. Well done everyone great team work 🤩

It’s all about the Monet

We have enjoyed learning about kandinskys abstract art the last few weeks at our art provocation area.
Today we introduced a new artist and art style.  We will now be learning about Claude Monet.
Monet was a French painter who was the founder of impressionist painting.
We used our technology skills to research who Monet was and look at a picture of him.

We decided to use water colours to recreate one of his famous paintings. The water Lilly Pond that he painted in 1899.

We found a picture of the painting and we each talked about what we seen within the painting. We seen “trees,” “a bridge,” “lily  pads”


We discussed the colours that Monet used. We used our thin brushes, paint pallets and water to create our own  representation of the Water Lily Pond.

We used our colour mixing skills to make our purples and greens we needed.

We used the picture as inspiration for our art work.

We enjoyed using a variety of skills such as fine manipulative skills when controlling our paint brushes. We were communicating and sharing learning with each other.

We worked really hard to create our pictures and enjoyed sharing them with each other.

“I made mine a card”

“I used purple”

“I mixed together the colours”

“Look at mine”

I wonder what Monet painting we will look at next.

Let’s have a shake shake shaking Friday🎉


This morning the children got creative, designing their own shakers!

We looked around the nursery for some noisy and quiet resources choosing for ourselves  the shakers we wanted to make.


We used Pom poms, shells, sprinkles, beads (as we have lots of different allergies at nursery)

We had a try out to discover if we had to change our quantities, if we were happy with the volume of our shakers


We had a sing song to practice our shakers singing Baa baa Black Sheep and Twinkle twinkle Little Star, we were so noisy that Bookbug decided to join us 🥰

You can make your own shakers at home with anything noisy and anything that can be sealed so you can shake shake shake it all day😁

 

 

Spooky Scones

Today in the home room we have been super busy making spooky scones. Firstly we gathered all the ingredients needed, we then followed our recipe to create our amazing colourful scones.

We measured out the amount of flour, milk and the rest of the ingredients.

“I need to put in a little more flour”

We then added in our food colouring of choice and mixed it all together. Once it was the right consistency we used the rolling pins and cutters.

“My scone is going to is going to be green”

The children then had lots of fun decorating their spooky scones using raisins.

”My one has a happy face”

“My scone has a shocked face”

Brilliantly decorated by the children and now time to go into the oven. Once they were ready the children bagged them up to take home.

“Oooo spooky”

”Mines is funny”

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