Category Archives: Creative movement

Baking, Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, music, nature, Outdoor Learning, Snack, Social Studies

What have we been doing at Cart Mill this week?

July 5, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

This week at Cart Mill we have been taking part in a wide variety of learning experiences across each of our playrooms and our garden.
In our Discovery room we have continued along our Jack and the Beanstalk learning journey by investigating “forces” and “travel”. Our mission was to find a way for Jack to get to and from the castle without the giant seeing! To do this we decided to fill the balloon with air and let it go to see how far it would travel towards the castle. It’s been so much fun seeing how much air we need to make the balloon go fast or slow.

In our Studio we have shown an interest in diggers and have been using the water tray as our construction site. We used dried rice to represent the dirt and had great fun using the construction toys to fill, empty and transport the rice. We used our technology skills to look at videos of real construction vehicles on our smart board. This experience had such a great level of engagement from all our children, especially our younger ones. We even found a Danny go video called “digging in the dirt” to all join in with, incorporating our health, well-being and movements skills.

In our Home room we have continued to develop our baking skills by researching recipes, measuring ingredients and making yummy vegan treats for our afternoon snack! The best part was taste testing our baking!
In our playdough area we have been experimenting by adding different scents to our playdough. We’ve tried peppermint, lemon and orange extracts. We even tried chocolate powder to make chocolate playdough. It smelt so good and looked just like chocolate. This week we decided to wander out to the the planting area to choose herbs and flowers to introduce some different scents. We picked basil, thyme, garlic and some flowers. As we grow in confidence, we are able to make our playdough independently using our self serve playdough station. It has been lots of fun choosing loose parts to add to our playdough and creating wonderful models.
Between the smells of playdough and daily home baking our home room smells delightful.

And finally our garden! The weather has been a little varied this week with showers of rain in between the sunshine. As usual, we didn’t let that stop our fun! We have used the gross motor rollers to mark make, played role play games using the play house and even took part in music and movement games such as head shoulders knees and toes. We extended our muddy movers skills by playing catch with the sticky ball and catching mitts. It was lots of fun taking turns with catching and throwing.

We all love learning through our play at Cart Mill! I wonder what we will do next week during our summer adventures?

UNCRC article 28- we have the right to play.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking

Creative Painting

June 26, 2024 Miss Keith Leave a comment

Today in the studio we decided to have some fun with the paint using our hands and feet! Firstly we laid down a clear shower curtain and chose colours of paint to “squirt” onto it.
How are we going to mix the colours together ? Using our problem solving skills we came up with some good ideas.
“We can roll around ! And I can use my feet . Be careful it is a bit slippy!”

We have developed our tactile and sensory skills from touching the paint and feeling it on our skin and between our toes. This also helps us develop gross motor skills and balance. We discussed colours and watched them mix together .

As we explore the paint, some of us enjoy fully covering ourselves as a form of self – exploration.
As we become more experienced artists, we demonstrated excellent gross motor skills by using our hands and feet to walk through the paint.

After all the fun we had with our body painting, we were able to hang our art work outside and use the remaining paint to draw shapes and letters on it with brushes. “A pointy A for my name”.

“I made a circle ⭕️”.
We all had a great morning having the freedom to discover and choose ways to be creative.

Article13 – I have the right to find out and share information.

Creative movement, Creativity, Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Fun

June 13, 2024 Mrs MacRae Leave a comment

So far this month we have had great fun outdoors where we have been developing our gross motor skills. We have done this through various activities from running in an empty garden, designing an obstacle course, to practicing our hopping and ball throwing and catching skills.

“I’m the winner!”

“Look I can do it!”

Using our creative imaginations, we turned our stage into a pirate ship! It was so much fun drawing our own treasure maps and using them to go on an adventure to find the treasure. “X marks the spot!” We climbed the mountain, crawled through the cave, balanced on the bridge, avoiding the shark invested waters below, to find the treasure.

“Shiver me timbers!”

As it’s nearly time for sports day we have been practicing running, balancing, waiting patiently for our turn, sharing equipment and cheering each other on!

Article 29 – I have the right to an education that develops my personality.

Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking

Paint -Let’s Explore !!

May 16, 2024 Miss Keith Leave a comment

Today we decided to explore and have some fun with the paint through colour mixing and sensory experiences. We had a look at the colour charts and chose our colours and filled our pots.

We began to mix our colours together and were excited to see them change right before our eyes. “ Look you made pink”. The children created peach, lime green, sky blue , yucky brown!

The children always enjoy some hand painting. Engaging with different colours, textures and materials stimulates the child’s senses, promoting integration and cognitive development.

We can even paint our nails and blow them dry like mummy does!

Some of the older children began to try different ways to use the cotton buds “Look I can roll mine and it makes a bigger mark and it feels nice in my fingers “. This helps develop the fine motor skills and enhancing hand eye coordination.

Producing their own artwork gives all our children a sense of accomplishment and pride, boosting their confidence and self-esteem. Plus it was just great fun!!

Article – 13 You have the right to play and learn through new experiences.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, Literacy

Pikachu clay models

May 13, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

The children wanted to make something different with the clay, but they were unsure of what. So last week we sat down together and discussed some ideas, I asked the children questions to get them to really think about their interests and how we could incorporate these in to our clay area.

Pokémon seemed to be a common theme so we used the iPad to search the internet for some Pokémon ideas. We came across a clay Pokémon figure, it was perfect! The children helped pick out some other clay model pictures including unicorns, garden gnomes, and even Elsa from Frozen . I printed these out and laminated them, leaving them on the table to inspire some ideas.

The children began to make their own models, squeezing, rolling, and manipulating the clay to their desired shape. They soon realised looking at the pictures that our clay was grey and the pictures used coloured clay, how would they make their own models colourful? They worked together using their problem solving skills to come up with some ideas. “I know, we could get paint!” “and paintbrushes and paint them and that’s how they will be colours”.

Once their models were finished we left them to dry out over the weekend, ready for painting this morning.

There was lots of great ideas.

“A bowl of soup with spoon”

“Pikachu”

“I made a snail”

They put their finished models on the shelf to let the paint dry, we can’t wait to see the end result.

Creative movement, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Social Studies

Dandelion tea in our mud kitchen cafe

May 1, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

We have really been enjoying our mud kitchen area in our nursery garden. The children have particularly enjoyed the role play aspect of our mud kitchen.

We have been using the mud, water and utensils to create lots of wonderful muddy meals. The children have turned our mud kitchen into the “mud kitchen cafe”. The children have been taking it in turns to see who will be the cook and who will be the customer. This has been especially enjoyed by our 3-5 year old children.

This week in our mud kitchen cafe some of our children noticed there were some dandelions growing in our garden and wanted to use them as part of the ingredients for their muddy meals.

The cooks got to work mixing, whisking and cooking the delicious muddy meals and daffodil tea.

We were using so many skills during our role play, such as gross and fine motor skills, creative thinking, imaginative play, problem solving and learning new vocabulary.

Once the food was cooked at the kitchen it was time to take it to the table to serve the customer

and pour the dandelion tea.

We also used our early writing and mark making skills to create our menu board to tell the customers what they could buy and how much it was going to cost them.

Our older children have been great role models for our younger children helping them to develop new skills and guiding them how to play.

Within our mud kitchen we have noticed the enjoyment the 2-3 year old children have gained from pouring and filling using the mud kitchen utensils. We set up a pouring and filling station on our tough tray in the mud kitchen to engage our younger children and follow their interests.

The children had so much fun using the water to fill up the different sized utensils and containers pouring them from one to the other or down the plastic gutter.

Our younger children were using their pouring and filling skills while developing their curiosity.

We had so much fun mixing and whisking the water just as if we were cooking in the mud kitchen cafe as well.

We loved pouring and filling the water so much we even made a puddle to splash in.

If our hands got too muddy and we didn’t like it we used our water jugs to wash away all the mud from our hands if we wanted to continue to play before going inside to wash our hands with soap.

I wonder what we will be serving in our mud kitchen cafe tomorrow?

Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Street Art Garden. 🌼🌸🌺

April 11, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

Some of our children have been commenting on the wonderful, colourful flowers we have growing in our garden.

This was the inspiration for our next street art creation in our gross motor art area in our garden.
We chose colours that we thought were like the ones we had seen on our flowers. One of the children wanted pink. Using our colour mixing skills, we mixed our red and white to make a pastel pink colour. We also mixed red and blue together with a little white to create a wonderful deep purple colour.

We made some flowers on our ground in chalk as the start of our street art creation and got our paints and brushes ready to use. As we were using the ground as our canvas, we made sure we put on our welly boots and aprons to protect our clothes.

Now for the fun part. To get creating and using our gross motor art skills.

Some of our children wanted to use the paints to colour in the chalk outlines.

Some of our children wanted to design their own flowers using lots of different colours to create a rainbow flower.

We were enjoying having the freedom to create and use the paints in our design process on a larger scale.

We spoke about what kind of flowers we were making for our street art garden. We had Daffodils, Tulips, Sunflowers and even a Spider-Man flower.

Some children were finding their own spontaneous inspiration and created different shapes.

We even made numbers and fruits as well with one child creating a green apple and a yellow banana.

We had so much fun painting our street art garden in the sun and letting our creative thinking shine.

I think our street art garden looks as wonderful and as colourful as the real flowers in our garden.

Article 21 – “Your education should help you use and develop your talents and abilities. It should also help you to learn to live peacefully, protect the environment and respect other people.”

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Perfectly Patterned Pictures

March 18, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

We have really enjoyed making patterns in our gross motor art area. We have investigated making marks with a variety of resources. We’ve used plungers to make circle prints.

We have used a selection of different types and sizes of brushes to see what marks and patterns we can create with them, such as large paint bushes, rollers, sweeping brushes and scrubbing brushes.

After we used our tyres to make large patterns we wondered what we could use next?

Luckily we got a special delivery. A new gross motor art tool to help us further develop our gross motor art skills.
We got brand new large pattern rollers. We couldn’t wait to get a turn of them and try them out.
First we tried putting a large sheet of paper down to see what marks we could make.

We enjoyed rolling the large rollers in the paint then pushing them over the paper, but it soon got filled up and we couldn’t see which patterns we had made. We decided to make it even more fun by taking the paper away. To have a larger area to explore our patterns and progress our skills even more.

By using the ground as our canvas, we could go further, see our marks more clearly and change direction.

We needed lots of paint to extend our marks, we rolled our roller in the paint and set off.

On one roller we had stripes.

And on the other we had spots.

We created a wonderful pattern picture in our gross motor art area for every one to admire.

We all were engaged and enjoyed this experience. Everyone was keen to have a turn. We were able to wait our turn and share.

Now that we have investigated patterns in our gross motor art area next we will be looking at “Street Art.” We have added some pictures of local murals that are around Glasgow to inspire our children to create their own.

I wonder what Street Art we will be creating next?

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Terrific tyre treads and painty patterns in the puddles

February 27, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

In our gross motor art area in the garden we have been exploring art on a large scale. So far we have used large brushes, mops, spray bottles and plungers. Today however we decided to make our art even bigger.

We decided to use the tyres to roll in the paint and see the patterns it made. We popped on our wellies and puddlesuits due to the rain showers we had this morning, and got to work creating our massive masterpiece.

It was interesting to see the different patterns the tyre made depending on where it rolled.

We had long tread marks and circles prints where it landed.

Because of the rain our patterns washed away quickly so we just had to make more.

It was a bit tricky at first to roll the tyre all the way across on our own ,we problem solved and thought, how about making it a team effort.

So we worked together to roll the tyres back and forward to each other. Team work made the art work!

We investigated who could push it the furthest and what kind of patterns did we make if we pushed it faster or slower.

We had so much fun with this large scale art outdoor experience. It was funny when the tyre splatted in the paint in the middle.

We tried different colours of powder paint to see which colours made the best pattern.

The rain got a little heavy at one point, but it mixed in with the powder paint and made our paint mix together and create much more paint puddles to roll our tyre into.

This was a great experience for our children of all ages to expand and inspire their creative designs, while also developing their gross motor skills.