Everyday the children enjoy helping to make their own snack. Â Which usually consists of seasonal fruits and vegetables. Preparing snack offers children the chance to develop their fine motor skills through chopping and slicing, make choices, gain an awareness of healthy eating and be able to express their likes and dislikes.
Today some of the children found some blueberries in the fridge and asked if they could make something else with them? We looked at different recipes and found one for blueberry muffins! We decided that this would be fun to try.
First we talked about what ingredients we would need.
Then we got to work making our yummy muffins. We followed the recipe, adding flour. One child commented â I bake lots with granny, I know that is flourâ Next thing to do was mix the oil into the mixture, followed by some soya milk and of course we had to add the most important ingredient, some blueberries. The mixture needed a lot of mixing and our arms got quite tired but we took it in turns so everyone could get a rest!
Next we used our mathematical skills to divide the mixture up between our paper cake cases before taking them to the oven. The hardest part was waiting until they came out because we could smell the delicious baking scent. Finally, they were ready and they looked amazing!
Welcome to our mud cafe
Today in our garden we have had lots of fun transforming our mud kitchen into a mud cafe where the children served up some delicious food!
Firstly the children worked as a team to create their own menu, the children showed great writing skills and fine motor control.
After the menu was complete it was time to open for business! The children picked what they would like to eat from the menu and our lovely âwaitressâ took their order then off to the kitchen she went.
âIâll have the ice cream and pasta pleaseâ
The children were super creative in the mud kitchen, working together mixing the mud, water and loose parts to make the yummy food.
âIâm making a delicious cake with mud and waterâ
Now it was time to serve the food!
âHere you go, the spaghetti is readyâ
âItâs a little hot, be carefulâ
The children love spending time outdoors in our mud kitchen. It offers them many benefits such as exploring sensory play, working as a team, using their imagination and of course being outdoors, as well as many more.Â
Developing our fine motor skills
Today the children have been developing their fine motor skills in a variety of ways.
Fine motor skills is the coordination of small muscles in movement with the eyes, hands and fingers.
We played a game called âPickle Popâ where the children had to use their hand muscles by moving the pickle with their finger to pop the bubbles.
â I have to move it over there to catch the bubbleâ
We put shaving foam on the light board and used our hands and  fingers to draw shapes and make patterns. This provides children with the opportunity to strengthen their hand muscles and hand eye coordination.
â The thread goes  up and down â
â I made a line through itâ
We spent some time at the mark making table where the children drew pictures, copied and continued shape and number patterns.
Paper plate creations!
Today in the Studio we explored our creativity skills.
We decided to use our imagination to transform paper plates into some wonderful colourful creations!
Our journey began when we thought of what we wanted to make- e.g  our favourite animal,  a tv character, a flower.
We had a great selection of different resources to choose from to make our creations such as types of paper, pens , pencils and lots of different colours.
We exercised our fine motor skills whilst strengthening our muscles as we cut paper carefully with scissors, used glue pots and glue sticks and stuck them down to our plates.
The children all had some fantastic individual ideas they brought to the Studio. We loved discussing what each other made their plate into and were able to describe and talk about what we did.
âIâm putting lots of spots on my ladybirdâ
â I need a snorty nose on mineâ
âMinions are my favourite , they are funnyâ
The children used good hand eye co ordination when using their cutting and sticking skills.
They  children worked  well together. They  understood and displayed good turn taking skills  and were able to demonstrate awareness of others needs.
âThis is a bit tricky can you hold this for me ?â
âcould someone pass me scissors?
Why not get creating at home – do you have any paper plates ? What ideas or wonderful creations can you make ? Weâ d love you to share your creations with us.
All sorts of measure
Today in the garden the boys and girls enjoyed exploring measurement through investigating the size, amounts and capacity of various items.
The children used standard and non standard units to measure and compare the height of each other, plants and water.
Some of our children were able to compare size and volume using comparative language such as âtall and tallerâ and â full and emptyâ
âLook at this theyâre the sameâ
Why don’t you see what you can use to measure different items at home?
Bookbug comes to visit Cart Mill!
We are so lucky that Bookbug came to visit us at Cart Mill today! We welcomed him with our “Hallo” song.
Next, it was time to choose a puppet from our Bookbug basket! It was so exciting to take our turn and use the puppet we had chosen to guess which song we would sing next.
We waited very patiently until it was our turn to guess the song.
It was so much fun to bounce our puppets on the lycra to see how high they could jump!
Finally it was time to end our Bookbug with one of our favourite stories. Our story had lots of rhyming words for us to practice!
We love when Bookbug comes to visit!
Sew Much Fun
In the home room we have created a new sewing area which the children have shown a great interest in. Today we had a discussion on a variety of the resources available and explored these by touching, naming and there purpose. The children could confidently identify lots of things connected with sewing:
âNeedles are jaggyâ
âscissors can be sharpâ
âWool is nice and soft and squishyâ
âthread is hardâ
The children were keen to try and thread a needle so with great patience , concentration and hand and eye co-ordination each child had a go. During this time we talked about the whole in the needle is called an eye and when you thread you put a knot at end so the stitch stays in. The older children were able to complete this and were excited to try to do a stitch on the sewing table. They listened well to instructions and were able to follow this with little support. They helped each other when got a bit tangled and commented on each otherâs stitches.
âLook at your big oneâ
â you have done lotsâ
The younger children were able to thread the large shaped buttons using laces.
The children were unsure what the wheel, block and trees were for so I demonstrated weaving, encouraging them to take part. All the children enjoyed the weaving and had fun experimenting with the the different coloured wool and objects.
â it looks like a rainbowâ
â I like these treesâ
Why not try exploring simple weaving techniques at home using ribbon or paper. This is a great activity for hand and eye co-ordination and a good way for building up fine motor skills.
3D Paper Sculpture Techniques
Today in the Studio Room we are learning a new skill. We are learning to make 3D paper sculptures. Today was all about creating a âfringeâ
We each picked a piece of paper and a pair of scissors.
We learned that to create a fringe we needed to cut the paper half in strips, but only half way up the page, leaving a band. The higher we cut the longer the strip we created. We were very careful when using our scissors to cut.
It was a bit tricky at first to keep the band at the top and not cut the paper in half. But we soon got the hang of it and made of fringe snips in lots of different sizes of paper.
We made big ones
Middle size
and even tiny ones.
Once we mastered the technique of fringing we moved on to a new technique of rolling and folding.
We used our fringed paper to create, fringe people, robots, lions, octopus, and funny faces.
We drew on our designs then folded the paper and used glue to keep the edges together.
We were proud of our finished results. It was fun engaging with a new learning experience and seeing where our imagination would take us today.
Next week we will be learning a new 3D paper sculpture technique.
Let’s have fun with Syllables!
Today in our new ‘noisy and quiet’ room the children have been busy exploring the noisy side using musical instruments and their voices. We all joined together and slowly clapped out the number of syllables in each of our names and counted how many there were. We found that most  of us had two, and some of us only had one, so we decided to clap to our second names too. We discovered that most of us had three syllables in our second name’s. The children were able to recognise and clap out the number of syllables in their own names and were able to count out their  friends names.
âmy name has twoâ
â I have three  syllables  in my name â
â I have more in my second nameâ
We then decided we would choose our favourite musical instruments and use them to develop our skills further.
â I am going to choose the drumâ
Â
We had lots of instrument to choose from.
âI Â am going to count my name using the maracasâ
The children were learning to develop their vocabulary, Â pre -phonics skills, and understanding of sounds and patterns within words through play. They were able to listen and respond to instructions whilst showing respect for each other through sharing and taking turns.
â I can count out my syllables  on the wooden sound maker”
â I am going to use the big drumâ
“I am enjoying playing on the big  drum and making sounds”.
We even found out we can count out syllables on the piano. WOW!
Why not try it at home! You could use compound words that form two words such as: sunset , hotdog, Â snowman or postman. To start with children just need to be able to recognise syllables by clapping, stamping or jumping for each syllable. Â We had lots of fun dividing words into syllables. Why not give it a try at home and let us know how you got on. Have fun playing with words!
Crunchy Fruit Cups!
Today the children decided they would make something new and a little different. They looked through our ingredients and chose what they wanted to use.
âI think we could use Cornflakes I know they taste good, I have them for my breakfast”.
âWhat about some cherries, they are my favourite fruit and my favourite colour , red”.
âYogurt is nice I have that for my lunch.â
“Raisins are my favourite, I want to use them.â
â I like syrup it is sweet I want to. Put that into my cake.â
Everyone got to work crunching up the corn flakes using rolling pins. Then it was time to put our cornflakes into a bowl and add 1 teaspoon of syrup. âOnly a little itâs not good for your teeth.â
âmix, mix mixâ
The children carefully cut up their cherries using their fantastic fine motor skills. â1,2,3,4,5 I have 5 cherriesâ
Next it was time to add two tablespoons of raisins and mix it all together. âItâs a bit stickyâ I will need to wash my hands after this.â
Finally, they then transferred the mixture to paper cases and added a tablespoon of dairy free yogurt.
â I need more yogurt .” â I think the cakes will taste yummy!â
It was time to put them into the freezer to set . The children worked well together and demonstrated good use of mathematical language, for example more and less.  They also used lots descriptive language such as bumpy, crunchy, sticky. The children noticed that the texture of the yogurt  changed after it came out of the freezer.
âItâs cold and hard nowâ
The children are so excited to finally taste their Crunchy Fruit Cups! Fabulous work everyone, well done!
