Welcome to our Cart Mill Cafe

Welcome to our Cart Mill Cafe where we just love our Marvellous Meals made by our cook Stephanie.

We have 3 sittings in our Cafe for our 3-5 year olds. 11.45 for our Stretch A am , 12.30 for our Stretch B  and finally 1.15 for our Stretch A pm and term timers.

We listen carefully for our names, go to the toilet,  wash our hands, then it’s time to wait for the Cart Mill train to take us to the Cafe!

“I’m so hungry!”.

Using our special tongs, we demonstrate fabulous fine motor skills through choosing our own vegetables from our crudité  platter. Pouring our own water helps us to practise our measuring and pouring skills.

“I like cucumber. I don’t like carrot”.

We just love sitting round our table together and it gives us the ideal opportunity to chat and get to know each other better.

After we have finished our tasty lunch we clear away our plates, cutlery and glasses. We just love helping to clean the tables and demonstrate excellent team work, working together to set the table for our friends. We are so good at counting how many chairs, knives and forks we need.

“I’ll do the fork and you do the knife”.
“I’ll do the plates”.
“We need one more fork and two glasses”.

We are very confident in sharing our likes and dislikes after we have finished our lunch. It was a definite 👍🏻 for the pastry today!

“I loved the pastry!”

”I didn’t like the potatoes”.

Our Cart Mill Cafe daily menu can be found below.

https://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/nursery-men

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark making masterpiece

We have been developing our mark making skills in the Studio room.
Our children enjoy exploring their mark making skills in a variety of fun, unique ways. Some of the ways we have been extending our mark making skills been using pastels, water paints and we experimented with marbling inks.

Mark making is a very important skill for our children to learn, but what is mark making? Mark making is a term used for the creation of different pattens, lines, textures and shapes. This can be done on a piece of paper, floor, outside in the garden or on an object or surface.

Mark making is a sensory and physical experience which can be enjoyed by all ages and abilities.
Today in the Studio we extended our mark making skills by using cardboard and a selection of mark making tools to create pictures of our favourite things.

We made race cars, ice creams, our family and our toys.

We enjoyed showing each other what we made, discussing what our favourite things were.  We were proud of the work we created. We like to be responsible to the environment and reuse and recycle our cardboard.

Some of the children enjoyed using the easel to mark make using pens and chalks.

We have opportunities to mark make across each of the playrooms, through arts and crafts, shaving foam, mud kitchen, and playdough to name just a few. What mark making do you like to do at home?

Apple and Potato Printing!

Today the children used some of the potatoes we had grown to make pictures printing with paint. They also used some old apples to make different patterns and shapes.
First we cut the apples in half using our safe knives. Even our younger children were very careful and sensible using the knives and displayed great cutting skills. This helps develop their fine motor  skills. Controlling the knife will help prepare them to master other skills like holding a pencil.

The children then used the chopped fruit and veg to create lovely pictures. They chose paint colours and got printing. Some children made different patterns using both shape and colour!

“I’ve made a colour rocket with apple and potato!”

“The apple print looks like a love heart! I love hearts!”

We had great fun in the garden with this activity and created lots of lovely art work too!

Berrylicious Muffins😁

Today the children have been talking about the different  berries they know -the different delicious tastes they have , different shapes they have and different ones they have seen when they have been on walks or maybe out shopping.


We thought about how we can use berries in our baking so we decided to make some mixed berry muffins. Together we looked at the recipe and we then followed the instructions to make our muffins.

“We can use blackberries , strawberries and raspberries”


”I think raspberries will make them taste nice”

“ It  looks gooey and sticky”
We carefully took turns when measuring out the ingredients. We counted and  we showed we could problem solve  when we realised their muffin mixture wasn’t binding well. We had to add more coconut milk to make the mixture a bit more sticky.

Once our mixture was ready we spooned it into our cake cases. It was now ready for the oven! ,First we set the timer for ten minutes to check to see if they were cooking well.  After waiting patiently our muffins were soon ready!😋

When out the oven and being left to cool down the children noticed the colour of their muffins had changed.

“They look weird”   “ That’s funny they look different”  “ They smell so yummy”
They then realised that they had changed because of colour of the berries.
Baking is a great experience for developing hand eye coordination through mixing and spooning. Everybody felt a great sense of achievement from baking their own yummy muffins and were excited to taste them at snack time.
What yummy tasty treats can you make using different types of berries?

Harvest Time

This morning in the garden we harvested more of our potatoes. We had great fun digging them out using the forks, trowels and also using our hands.

“I found a red one!”

“I found a white one!”

”it feels cold”

After harvesting  “lots and lots” of potatoes we took them inside for a wash.

The potatoes were all different sizes so we decided to compare them to discover which was the biggest and which was the smallest. We were even able to line them up in order of size.

“I found a huge one.”

Then we decided to weigh the potatoes and experiment with different ways we could balance the scales, developing our mathematical language. 

“That’s too heavy.”

“That’s not balanced.”

All this hard work made us really hungry so we washed them and popped them in the microwave to cook. We had to wait for them to cool down but they were worth the wait!


“Yummy!”

“5 out of 5!”

Let’s make music!

Today in the noisy quiet room the children got creative with the musical instruments. In a small group we started by singing songs and playing our chosen instrument together.  We began to explore beat and tried to copy the beat played by Derek and follow along wile we sang. We all played beautifully and made an excellent band.

“Let’s do old MacDonald had a cat”

“Sing twinkle twinkle”

We then explored how to use the instruments to make different sounds. Learning new words like high pitch and low pitch, and learning how to make the instruments sound noisy or quiet.

“Twinkle twinkle is a quiet song play it just a little”

Then the group got creative and invented their own songs. We had “it’s time to go to bed song”,  “The snake in the hat song” and the “bumped the head song”.  They were superb!

We all demonstrated good turn taking and swapped our instruments  in the group so that everyone got a turn at playing something different. We all had lots of fun and can’t wait till we can do it again.

Snail trail

This morning one of the boys brought in a snail from his garden to show all his friends. We built him a little home with grass, pine cones, shells, a log to climb on and also gave him some cucumber to eat.


“I give him shells.”

One of the boys decided to build him an extra home using the 3D modelling materials from the studio.

“There’s a space at the top for the big snails and a secret bit at the bottom for the baby snails.”

We investigated the snail’s shell and noticed there were lots of spirals on it.

We created our own spirals using loose parts and drawing on the mirrors.


“It goes round and round and round.”

Look out for snails in your garden and you could have some super slimy fun too!

Experimenting with Loose Parts and Clay

Today in the studio the children have been creative with clay and Loose parts. We have been busy adding a variety loose parts to clay, this enriches and expands the children’s creativity, imagination and learning in lots of different ways.

Loose parts create endless possibilities and invites creativity. When a child picks up a rock and starts to play, most likely that rock can become anything the child wants it to be. Imagination, creativity, curiosity, desire, and need are the motivation of loose  parts play helps kids develop creative and critical thinking skills by encouraging them to use their imagination and experiment with new ideas freely.

“ It was a pizza now it is a birthday cake with nine candles on it”

 

“I am making my mummy”

“I am a making pizza,  these are my toppings  on top Rice, ham and pineapple”


“ my pizza has cheese and mushrooms on it “

“ Look i have made a owl”

       

“ I am making a rainbow forest with lots of shining jewels “

The children were able to arrange and rearrange, sort, match and create their own images whilst Improving their fine motor skills by rolling, pressing and moulding whilst using their problem solving skills and developing their  hand -eye co-ordination .

Why  not have a look around  your own house or garden for some  loose parts and see what you can be creative with !

 

Having a splashing time in the Studio

We had a special donation of some huge cardboard to our Studio Room. Our children enjoy using cardboard for lots of creative creations in our Junk model area. But today we had a idea of something else we could use the large cardboard for.

Splash painting.
There was different bottles, syringes, droppers and different colours of paints. It was very exciting picking which one we were going to use.

Because it was such a big piece of cardboard we could even sit in the middle to create our art work.

 

 

 

 

 

We mixed a little bit of paint and water to help our paint splat, spray, drop and squeeze.

We are very independent in our Studio Room and can pick and put on our own paint aprons when we want to paint or get messy.

We loved how far we could squeeze and spray the paint that was inside the syringe.

Good job our cardboard was so big.

It was interesting watching all the colour mix together to see what different colours we created.

We were learning different techniques of making art by using our spay bottles, droppers and syringes to mark make in creative ways.

We think it looks really nice. We all worked really hard together creating our large scale art.
We really did have a splashing time.

☀️Sun days are fun days !☀️

With our summer term  ending and many of our children getting ready to finish their time with us to move on to school….

What better way to enjoy our last days of nursery and the most likely (but hopefully not) the glorious  sunshine, was to spend today having a fun day having some slippy sunny day sliding on our big water slide!
Using our soapy liquid and our running water hose  we had lots of exciting fun and laughs sliding down our hilly slope.

As you can tell it wasn’t just the children who had all the fun! 😀

We used our bodies in different ways to find the most fun and fastest ways to go down!

The most difficult part was the climb back up the hill to the top; it was well worth it though for those few moments we had laughing all the way down!
Once we were all dried off and changed into dry clothing we cooled off and enjoyed a relaxing snack with an icy treat! 😎

Sunny days are the best!

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