On Wednesday we had a visit from Clydebuilt Puppet Theatre. They told us three cautionary tales- The Ungrateful Crocodile which taught us to be kind to others who are kind to us, The Forgotten Treasure which is about being grateful for what you have and a good old favourite Red Riding Hood- The Wolf’s Story.
The children absolutely loved watching the show! There were lots of oohs and aahs and plenty of giggles too. Thank you so much to Steve and Leigh for the wonderful performances.
Today some of the toddlers got creative mark making, selecting their own paint colours and using large brushes and rollers, developing fine motor skills and muscle dexterity they even made their own natural brushes from recycled flowers. They painted over different textures eg Anaglypta , tinfoil, cling film, lining paper and canvas promoting language development about how the different materials felt. “That paper is rough” “the shiny is cold and smooth”The toddlers talked about the colours they were using and mixing. “ It’s yellow” “ I like the blue paint best” “I’m making purple” They enjoyed using the roller and big brushes. “I want the biggest brush” “the roller is fun” The toddlers did great turn taking whilst sharing the resources. The end result was a beautiful piece of colourful art. Well done toddlers!
We are so lucky at Cart Mill to have Blue as part of our team. Blue has visited the centre since she was a tiny puppy and the children love to see her when she visits. It has been such a pleasure to watch her grow and to give children the opportunity to care for her.
The children benefit so much from having contact with animals. Caring for pets is an enriching experience for children which offers opportunities to experience nurture, relationships and nature. Froebel noted that ‘The child who has cared for another living thing… is more easily led to care for his own life’ (Froebel in Lilley, 1967:128).
The children benefit from outdoor exercise as they accompany her on her walks and understand there are responsibilities from owning a pet.
We love having Blue days in our centre!
We have been continuing our musical learning in our Studio Room. We have been playing new games on our interactive board that teach us music.
We have our very own interactive piano. The piano keys are displayed on the board and we use our musical skills to play the notes to make our sounds. We have been learning that the colours represent the notes. When you play a long note it has a long block of colour and a short note produces a small colour. When we play the piano scale, it will make a rainbow of colour notes. We have very much enjoyed this.
The next game we have is blob opera. It’s a very funny game that teaches us about singing in different pitches, the longer the blob goes the higher the note he sings. We can even take the blobs on tour over the world stages. We can record the blobs singing and listen back to what operatic song we made.
Finally, we have the paint with music game. This game teaches us to paint with sound. We can choose from a range of instruments and make our marks across the screen. This combines sound with mark making encouraging children to make music following our marks. We can select from different canvases to create our paint with music.
We have very much enjoyed exploring music in this way, bringing music to life for our learners.
The children have been developing and exploring their hand-eye-coordination skills through sewing in the home room. We have also been learning to assess and manage risk when sewing with real sewing needles, and how important it is to be careful. The children have been exploring lots of fun ways to develop this new skill, like practising our “stitches”, “threading” and using “real life needles”. So we decided to decorate our sewing area to show all our friends our hard work!
Today in the Discovery Room we have had lots of fun developing our numeracy skills through use of our Numberblocks!
Firstly we practiced our number recognition skills. We were able to correctly identify the number on each card. Some of us were able to do this by looking just at the number and some of us counted the blocks.
We then used our amazing 1-1 correspondence and fine motor skills to build the correct number block for each card. It was a bit tricky clicking the blocks together but we worked together as a team and helped each other.
We were also able to recognise and name all the different colours and build a rainbow number 7!
Next we decided to challenge ourselves further to see if we could correctly build and sequence the number blocks in order. We were able to identify the numbers that came before and after and which number block was the biggest and smallest.
“I maked all the blocks1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 10 is the biggest.”
We even used the same colours as the real number blocks!
We were having so much fun that we decided to challenge ourselves further by using the activity cards to see if we could add numbers together.
“It’s 3, 4 and 7!”
We even created our own numberblocks using our fabulous mark making skills!
“It’s all the numberblocks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10”
Today we had a very special visitor called Winston the polar bear who came to talk about climate change.
We made a mind map about what the children already know about climate change and what is happening to our planet 🌎
We discussed the ways that we help our planet at nursery.
“We put our fruit in the little bin”
” The white bag for the paper”
We then read the story about Winston and all his polar bear friends and what is happening to the ice where the polar bears live.
“The ice is melting”
“because it’s too hot”
We will continue to meet up with Winston and learn some more about our planet and what we can do to help at home and at nursery.
We have been celebrating Book Week Scotland and Nursery Rhyme week here in our Studio Room.
Today’s rhyme is Sleeping Bunnies. It’s a favourite of ours and most of us are familiar with the song and actions. For some it was a brand new song to hear. We used the smart board to listen to Bookbug singing us Sleeping Bunnies.
Now that we all knew what to do we had a turn of joining in.
First we pretended we were the sleeping bunnies
Then we sang our merry song and then….. wake up bunnies
It was time to hop like little bunnies
It was lots of fun. We used lots of skills throughout this experience, we extend our vocabulary by learning new songs, our gross motor skills to hop and our expressive arts to sing and our imagination to become bunnies.
We also used our nursery rhyme books to look for other familiar rhymes. We have been learning that we can find out information from a book.
We had to look at the picture to give us a clue to what the rhyme may be.
we guessed almost all of the rhymes.
I wonder what tomorrow’s rhyme will be?
Welcome to our toddler den, a place where we can investigate, explore, shelter and use lots of natural open ended resources in our play
Our small world is a particular favourite.
Look who came to visit our den today……Bookbug!!! The children were so pleased to see him and sing some songs and share stories.
We all enjoyed singing Incy Wincy Spider, Gail is a little nervous of the real ones 🕷😳
The children love to be outside and in our den it feels like we’re inside when we’re out!
During this term we are investigating time as part of our numeracy planning. This morning we looked at our clock and discussed what we know about time, clocks and why we need them.
“It’s a circle.”- C
”It’s to put the numbers up.”- E
”It’s for play time and home time.”- L
”It’s for lunch time.”- R
Then we made our own clocks. We drew round a circle, made a great attempt at writing all the numbers and then we discussed the hands of the clock.
Once we finished making our clocks we used them to play the game What’s the time Mr Wolf?
The wolf turned the hand to show which number they were calling out and, even though it was pouring rain, we all had great fun taking turns of being the Wolf.
