The boys and girls have been discussing the change in the weather. We all had so much fun playing in the sun but now the grey clouds are out and we think a thunder storm is coming for a visit!
The children decided to have a look at our weather board and pick out their favourite weather and what the weather was doing today.
“ the grey clouds mean rain “
” I eat ice cream when it is sunny “
“ I love snow the best “
After discussing the different weather, the children decided to create their own weather pictures of their favourite weather!
This week the toddlers have been extremely busy. After enjoying home grown vegetables for snack this week, they decided to make some yummy blueberry muffins to enjoy for snack.
We all washed our hands and found a recipe book to let us know what ingredients we needed.
We put all of the dry ingredients into a bowl, flour, sugar, baking powder, lemon rind and salt and gave it a stir.
Now we had to mix the wet ingredients, buttermilk, eggs and melted butter.
And gave it a good stir.
We carefully added the wet ingredients to the flour mix and gave it a good mix. It became very gloopy!
Pop in some blueberries.
The children took great care filling the muffin cases before putting them in the oven to cook.
The muffins looked delicious when they were cooked. The children had to wait till they had cooled before enjoying them for snack.
Some of the children wanted to taste some of the blueberries…. even the lemon!
The toddlers have been growing vegetables in our garden. We have been watering them regularly and today we were able to harvest them! We enjoyed some delicious toddler grown snacks including carrots and spring onion, with a potato to take home for later.
We firstly picked our carrots, spring onions and potatoes.
Then we washed the soil off.
Finally after working so hard today, we enjoyed tasting our Cart Mill grown vegetables at snack time.
The children have been learning where our food comes from and it was nice to be able to learn and share together. 😀
Today in the Studio Room we were using our creative skills to make our massive art piece.
First we selected the colours we wanted to use.
Then we picked our paper and used the floor as our canvas.
We picked the tools we wanted to experiment with and got our paint ready to use.
All the children had so much fun having the large space to express their creative arts, we used our mark making skills to make unique and wonderful marks. We used both our fine and gross motor skills to complete our masterpiece.
The children decided to use their hands and feet to gain a whole sensory experience.
We have very happy children in our Studio Room, engaging fully in their learning.
Maybe we have some future artists here in our Studio.
Yesterday the children enjoyed their own mini games which started them talking about various sports that they all take part in. Running races, jumping, bike racing, tennis, basketball, gymnastics, swimming, football, golf to name a few.
This led to talk about the Olympics being held over the next couple of weeks in Tokyo, Japan. Some children asked what the Olympics were. Through discussions with staff, they learned that the Olympics were held every 4 years with people from countries all over the world taking part in lots of different sports to win medals for their country.
The children watched some of the Opening Ceremony from London 2012 with great interest and tried to guess the countries from their flags, as well as watching the ceremony where the medals are awarded.
1st, 2nd and 3rd placeJ said it goes round her neckShe looked very happy
After their mini games some of the children asked if they could make their own little medals. They found some gold, silver and a bronze coloured shiny paper and some ribbon. They glued the shiny paper onto some card, cut out a circle and attached some ribbon.
S’s medal goes over her head like the one on the screen.
C shows her silver medal off with pride.
Who knows we may have a future olympian here at Cartmill.
Taking part in sports helps to keep our bodies fit and healthy and improves our general health and wellbeing.
At Cart Mill we have been having lots of fun with bubbles.
“How do you make giant bubbles”
Some of the children wanted to make giant bubbles. So we decided to experiment to see what we could use to make giant bubbles.
“how about that hola hoop?”
We mixed some water and washing up liquid and used our hola hoop, but our bubbles just kept popping.
“I think we are going to have to look up a special recipe.”
We used the internet to find a recipe to make giant bubbles. We also watched some video’s of The amazing bubble man. The children were fascinated with the bubble tricks Louis Pearl created.
We made up our recipe and started experimenting trying out different techniques to creating some amazing bubbles.
Today is fun Friday at Cart Mill! We decided we would like to make our own necklaces or bracelets! We discussed what we would need to make them and decided we would need ribbon, some beads, and some scissors to cut our ribbon.
We carefully cut our ribbon and used our problem solving skills to discover we would need to tie a knot at the end of our ribbon to stop the beads falling off!
We carefully shared out our beads and each chose our favourite colour, design and size of bead. We had to concentrate really hard as it was tricky to thread the ribbon through the small hole.
We concentrated very hard and demonstrated fantastic patience and teamwork. Finally our Terrific Threading was finished!
We had lots of fun deciding which thread was the longest, shortest, which followed a pattern and which had our favourite colours. We decided we liked the rainbow threads the best! 🌈
We decided it might be a wee bit dangerous to put some of the threads around our necks as they were too tight so we decided to tie them to our bags instead!
Threading is a great activity to help develop fine motor skills, strengthen muscles, develop hand-eye co-ordination and concentration skills. It’s a lot of fun too!
This week the children in the Home Room have been creating their own fabulous pictures with transient art.
‘Transient art is simply moveable art’. The children are getting creative using loose parts such as stones, shells, buttons etc, to create pictures using their imagination.
Transient art allows children to make a picture 100 different ways, rather than having 1 end product when gluing and sticking.
The children added blue playdough to their pictures and pretended they were at the seaside and the playdough was the sea.
“Look at the waves in the sea, they are very big”
They even made 3D pictures. “Look the bird is sticking out of the picture”
This experience can be explored indoors and outdoors and can often lead from collecting sticks, stones, leaves etc. when out a local walk.
The children had lots of fun creating their own pictures, why dont you have a turn at home, when at the park or out a walk?
Today the children in the toddlers had so much fun making yummy, sticky flapjacks! We did lots of measuring, weighing, melting, greasing and mixing to make the perfect consistency. This morning it turned out a little bit dry, so we put our thinking caps on… how do we make it stickier? The answer of course, was more sticky syrup!! We added some extra tablespoons of syrup to see if it would change the texture as it was “too crumbly” and “crunchy”the first time, and it turned out just right. Well done guys! See if you can spot the difference.
We can’t wait to see what the children decide to make next from their book of baking ideas. Stay tuned!!
Welcome to Cart Mill Airways, were our pilots welcome you aboard our new aeroplane!
Our new state of the art aircraft was designed and constructed by the children in the Discovery room.
The design process was well thought out, we used our smart board to explore different aircrafts such as Concorde, Boeing 747 and Jet planes before we built ours.
The children worked together to build the aeroplane. They used different size and shaped blocks along with loose parts.
We also created a flight menu for you to enjoy while you fly with us.
Today’s flight is to Australia 🇦🇺
Today the children worked together while building the air craft. This developed their communication and language skills. We also Role played different roles such as pilot and air hostess.
We can’t wait to welcome you aboard our next flight. Where will our next destination be?
