Category Archives: Creative movement

Creative movement, Outdoor Learning

SIMOA safe in our garden

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We loved watching the diggers and the landscaping team create our new garden space. It’s fabulous having more space to play. We have a big sandpit we can go in and play with and we love it. We can’t wait to plant and grow in our wonderful planters see all the beautiful flowers.

One day we noticed the cold weather had made our garden a bit slippy. We went out to check if our garden was safe to play in.

This sparked an idea. Let’s make our own risk assessment to incorporate our new garden areas.  So we went around the garden looking for possible risks.

Our children were very safety conscious and could tell me what is safe and what’s not safe. We took photos of our areas and with a little IT help we made our own safety garden risk assessment.

Before we go out to play our responsible helpers get their clip boards and pens to check our garden. Some of the areas we check are:

our gates,

Our sand,

our tyres,

our stepping logs,

And our doors,

Once we give it all a safety tick, it’s time to come out and play. We have also been learning about risk and staying safe on our obstacle course. How to build it safely aswell as staying safe while completing the course.

 

We do love risky play, even more now we know how to do it safely.

Some times we do forget, so Emma came up with a catchy wee tune to remind us how to stay “SIMOA Safe”.

We will be learning this song over the next few weeks. (You might recognise the tune from our Christmas concert. ) Watch this space for a video of our children singing it.

 

 

Block building, Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Snack

Fun in the Pond 🦢🦆

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This week in the Pond the children have been exploring and learning through a variety of different experiences inside and out.

We celebrated Robert Burns day by introducing Scottish traditions in a fun and age appropriate way including the children’s interests to engage them. They made their own tartan using paint and added in cars to create different patterns and prints. We played matching games which sparked conversations about the Scottish pictures and what they are. “ it’s a mouse” 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

The children have been developing their independence with simple activities such as preparing healthy snacks and following the Child smile practice to brush our teeth, learning how to use the utensils in a safe way and the importance of choosing healthier options for our overall health.

The children had fun lying on their tummies rolling the small ball along the floor to each other, they had fun while developing their core strength, hand eye coordination, arm and shoulder muscles which are all important for later skills such as balance, early writing skills and dressing independently. In the garden we used spray bottles with paint  to create colourful patterns on the shower curtain and strengthen our hand muscles.

Baking, Creative movement, Imaginative thinking, Literacy

Weekly round up- Home Room

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Welcome back and a happy new year to everyone!
We have started the new year with some new dressing up clothes in the home corner and the children are loving it! There is so much imaginative play and children co-ordinating who will play which role with each other, creating a wonderful language rich environment.

We have been developing our writing skills at the literacy table by tracing letters on the trays. With Helen’s encouragement, our pre-schoolers are encouraged to recognise and copy the letter cards on the table and our younger learners can engage in pre-writing skills by making circular patterns.

The baking area has transformed into the cooking corner and Gail has been making soup with the children. Just what you need in this weather! The children have been learning how to keep themselves safe while using reals tools and are also learning about measuring and new language specific to cooking.

In the story corner, Eilidh and the children have been re-telling familiar stories. The children have enjoyed using the puppets and taking ownership of the story so much that we created a puppet theatre for them to share the stories to an audience. The favourite stories this week have been The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goldilocks, The Smartest Giant in Town and Jack and the Beanstalk.

Article 29 (goals of education)- Education must develop every child’s
personality, talents and abilities to the full.

Creative movement, Creativity, Imaginative thinking, Outdoor Learning

Wild animals in action!

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All things wild and wonderful has been a continuing theme in our garden this week! We love small world play and are always keen to introduce our favourite animals, figures and vehicles! Small world play is a fantastic way to develop our imagination, creativity and problem solving skills.  We loved one of our friend t-shirts and this sparked the idea to explore wild animals! Delving into our resources we discovered elephants, tigers, gorillas, rhinos, tigers and lions “the king of the jungle!”

One of our favourite books is Rumble in the Jungle and we had so much fun retelling  the story using our animals, adding a “roar for the lion”, “oooh-oooh, aah-aah like the monkey”,  and our favourite actions for the elephant, chimpanzee and sssssssssnake!

We shared our experiences of visiting “Edinburgh zoo” “the safari park” and chatted about the animals we had seen and which were our favourites. Taking turns, we discussed our favourite animals and shared our fantastic knowledge about the features of each animal!
“the elephant has a trunk, it drinks the water and then spits it out all over its head, like a shower”. “The lion was sleeping and it did a big roar”, the giraffe has a big long neck. It doesn’t have any hands so it uses its big long tongue to eat leaves on the tree. It’s tongue is blue, like my top!”

Next we decided to move like our favourite animals! We agreed that the giraffe is “very tall so we have to reach up to the sky, on our tippy toes”, “the hippo rolls in the mud, like this”, “the crocodile snaps like this”, and the cheetah runs really fast”.


We demonstrated that we can hold balance in various shapes when moving, are aware of and can control our personal space and body parts when moving, perform basic movements such as jumping, hopping and running and move different parts of our bodies at different speeds.

The weather may have been wild but we have had a wonderful time and had so much fun, ROAR!

Article 29: I have the right to an education which develops my personality, traits and abilities.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, music, Social Studies

Fun in the pond

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Come and see some of the things we got up to today.

The children have been expressing themselves with the paint, using their large motor skills to create their ideas on the shiny tinfoil and seeing how the colours mix together to create new ones .


“My hands are orange”

We have been using our nursery rhymes to recognise colours, make choices and take turns. The children each chose a coloured disc which has a nursery rhyme on the back (eg. Red disc = The wheels on the bus) to sing together.

“My favourite is Twinkle Twinkle”

The  children mixed together all the ingredients to make play dough, learning to follow simple instructions and develop their gross motor skills as they stir. They added blue paint to add colour and explored the textures and feelings using their senses.

“It feels sticky”

Finally we played parachute games, using our large muscles to move the parachute up and down working together as team to make it move. We sang some songs and sat under the parachute before doing sleeping bunnies.

 

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, nature, Outdoor Learning

Our Exciting Garden 🪴

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Our garden has been very busy and we have especially enjoyed the better weather over the last few days. Playing outdoors allows children develop self-confidence, independence and self-esteem. Their physical health improves through exercise and vitamin D, enhanced mental well-being, better sleep quality and increased social interaction and development.
Of course we are just having lots of fun !!
We have enjoyed developing our obstacle course adding on extra challenges ….

”round and round gets me dizzy”

How many steps to get to the bridge ?

The boys and girls had great fun on be a Pirate day ….

We used our creativity and problem solving skills to build a pirate ship …..

Ooh arrrgh if the pirates caught you they would make you walk the plank into shark infested waters

In the water tray the water had turned red “my hands are red when they are under the water. We did lots of poring and filling to get rid of our Red Sea 🌊

Finally we have been enjoying some theatre shows on the Cartmill stage showing off our creativity, imagination and acting skills along with some great singing .

After such a busy few days we are all ready for our holiday weekend which we hope you all enjoy.

Article – Children have the right to play and explore their outdoor environment.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, life cycles, Mindful moments, nature, Outdoor Learning

Days in the Garden 🪴

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In the garden this week during sunshine and showers we have been very busy.

The girls and boys have expressed their artistic skills with some great art work on our giant easel. They picked colours of paint , mixed some colours and had lots of fun  creating giant pieces of art.  This type of play  will help the children develop large muscle use as well as co ordination and balance.

At the obstacle course the girls and boys were developing their balancing skills. It was lovely to see the children offering to help each other when they had a bit of a wobble  !  They were also encouraging each other “ put your arms out it will help”.

During the wet days we ask the children to put on their wellies and puddle suits “with a little help” to help them develop their independence. When all suited up we have great fun running and jumping into the puddles. Some of the children were keen to make bigger puddles and cleverly notice if they collected the rain water from the pipes they could add it to their puddles .

In the garden we have been looking at the Life Cycle of the sun flower. In spring the children had planted seeds and watched them grow learning that they required to be watered and also grew more in the sunshine. As the sunflowers have now finished flowering  we have picked them and started harvesting the seeds ready for re planting next spring. Pulling out the seeds gives the children an opportunity to develop their fine motor skills and hand eye co-ordination skills.

Finally this week we decided just to have fun with the soil . This gives us the opportunity to  explore using our senses “ it’s softer than sand”  I think it “feels cold” well it smells like “a farm”. It can make mud pie castles and I will squash mine down !. Being in the garden  helps reduce stress levels, improve mood and enhance self esteem whilst also being a good form of exercise.

We are looking forward to next week in the garden as we explore our outdoors.

Article – We have a  right to learn and explore outdoors.

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

Project Picasso 🧑‍🎨

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After the success of learning about the art styles of Jackson Pollock we looked at another artist who uses “ faces” as part of their art work. We discovered “Picasso”. He used different shapes and designs to create his art work.

We learned about Picasso, first by looking at how he used vibrant colours to design each part of the face. The faces were a bit funny everything was in different places! But we learned this was called “abstract art”.

Next we tried to see if we could make a “Picasso face” using faces we cut up from magazines. To se if we could create an abstract face.

It was fun selecting different parts of the face to piece together and seeing how it looked at the end. Very Picasso inspired.

To challenge the thinking of some of our older children we added pictures of other types of objects to see if they could make a Picasso face with things that aren’t facial features.  Some of our children thought using pictures of pens as hair was a great idea!

The next step on our Project Picasso learning journey was to see if we could draw our very own “Picasso face” using coloured pencils.

We used some Picasso prints as inspiration and let our creative minds design our own interpretation of Picassos work.

The last stop of our Project Picasso was painting (the best part) we used our colour mixing skills to create our very own abstract face in the style of Picasso using our creative design skills.

We have been such successful learners in our art area, leaning about the art styles of famous artists. We might have the future “Picasso” here at Cart Mill.

As Picasso used lots of vibrant colours we found another artist who used vibrant colours and grids to create his art…. “Piet Mondrian”. This is the next artist we will be leaving about in our art areas both inside and sharing our learning out into the large outdoor art area. I am very excited to see how it turns out.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Fun with Gross Motor Art!

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Recently in the garden we have been enjoying ourselves at the gross motor art area. We have been experimenting with ways in which we can create pictures using many different resources.

One of our favourite activities was dipping balloons in paint to create a very colourful picture! We tied string to the balloons and had great fun bouncing them in the paint and then on to the paper.

“Ha, it bounced on my nose, I have a red rudolf nose!”

”The balloons are all the colours now!”

We then got the big brushes out and used them on the shower curtain to further develop our gross motor skills.

“Look, I’ve made a pretty rainbow!”

The rain made all the colours run together, we had fun brushing the puddles and guessing what colours it would make!

”Its pink now!”

The children always enjoy when the spray bottles come out! This time we filled them with watery paint. We hung the shower curtain up and used the spray bottles to design a picture!

“It looks so pretty now!”

The children also really enjoy the large rollers we have for painting in the garden. They love rolling them in the paint and seeing what patterns they can create when rolled on the paper.

“Wow, it looks like a train track!”

Finally today in the garden we tied paper cups to sting and hung them from a stick. The cups had holes in the bottom to allow paint to come out when the children were swinging them. This proved to be messy but super fun!

“Ahhh, the paint nearly got me!”

There are so many ways to enjoy outdoor art whilst developing the children’s gross motor skills. This is enhancing their coordination, balance and body control. These activities encourage the children to use larger muscle groups and helps with their physical development.

Article 31 – you have the right to play.

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

X marks the Spots

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This week in the creative area we have been exploring patterns. We have been using different utensils to create these patterns. Today we used different circular resources from our junk modelling area. We used tubes, corks and lids dipped in paint to make our spotty prints.

We noticed the paper was in the shape of an X. “X marks the spots.”

Meanwhile In our Junk modelling area we were gifted a large box.

We didn’t know what we could do with it. Could we fit inside?

Yes we could it was so big! If X marks the spot maybe we could make a pirate ship! We soon got to work. We used our technology skills to look for ideas for our ship on the iPad.
We decided we needed a pirate flag. We worked together to problem solve how to attach it to our ship.

Once we had secured it with tape and ribbon, we got to work making the windows and shape of the boat.

We used our safety skills to cut the box with scissors.

We needed to paint it next. It was such a huge box it took lots of us to paint it.

One of our children spotted that we can’t have a pirate ship without a steering wheel!

We used paper straws to make “the jaggy bits the pirate captain holds to drive the boat.” We tried lots of different ways to attach the wheel so we could still turn it. Luckily we tried pipe cleaners and it worked!

It was time to set sail on the seas to hunt for pirate treasure! At the writing table, we had the fantastic idea of creating a telescope for our adventures!

At group time today we found a book in the story area about pirates and decided tomorrow we will make a treasure map to give us directions to the treasure.

Our learning experience and ideas went on a journey and crossed all over the nursery today using different areas to add to our initial idea.

We can’t wait to see how our treasure maps turnout and if x really did mark the spot!