Category Archives: emotional literacy

Block building, Creativity, Digital Technology, emotional literacy, Outdoor Learning

Welcome back everyone 🥰

January 8, 2024 Miss Mitchell Leave a comment

It’s lovely to see everyone and get settled well back into our nursery routine. Today we have enjoyed a variety of interesting learning experiences. We have made play dough, following an adult’s instructions to measure, mix, knead and roll. We then used it to make 3D shapes and discuss the properties of the different shapes. We got straight back to building wonderful creations including big towers so we could count how many bricks we had added. We investigated technologies and used our fine motor skills to make different drawings.

We also spent time problem solving to complete a pirate jigsaw and to build a new garage, which allowed us lots of imaginative play for our toy cars.

With everything being frozen, we decided it was a perfect time to role play with the artic animals.

And this is just the start of our first full week! Who knows what else we will do in Cart Mill this January?

Creative movement, emotional literacy, Expressive Arts

Creative movement

November 9, 2023 Mrs Hannah Leave a comment

Creative movement is a fabulous way for children to express their feelings, thoughts and ideas. Touch and movement are the earliest senses we develop. Children explore the world around them through these senses and they may provide rich learning experiences that can influence our health and well-being (Reynolds. S. 2023).

Energetic play is an excellent way which supports children to progress their movement in different forms. Creating their own obstacle course provided a wealth of opportunities to climb, balance, jump or crawl!

Taking turns, our children created the movement they would like to perform, and their friends took great delight in copying! Whether it be running, side stepping, rolling (which was a definite favourite), rotating or frog jumps, each movement provided the opportunity to travel through our space, develop our co-ordination and strengthen our gross motor skills.

Children enact repeated patterns of behaviour in play, known as Schemas, allowing them the freedom to explore their thoughts and ideas, which is an important part of their brain development. Performing action songs with simple patterns such as head, shoulders, knees and toes and Grand old duke of York during Bookbug is the ideal opportunity to connect with our bodies and each other by creating tunnels, and improve our flexibility!

What better way to express our creative movements than to clear some space, pop on favourite songs and dance our hearts out! This provides the opportunity to move freely, perform spontaneous movements and have lots of fun!

Article 29 – your education should help you use and develop you talents and abilities.

emotional literacy

Exploring Emotional Literacy

October 26, 2023 Mrs Hannah Leave a comment

Emotional literacy is the ability to recognise, understand and express our emotions, which isn’t always easy to do! At Cart Mill we’re always thinking of creative ways we can explore our feelings and emotions and ways to share them with each other.

A very special visitor came to see us today!

We decided “Roary” looked “a wee bit sad cause he didn’t have anyone to play with.” And “he Roars because he’s sad and a wee bit angry”. Roary asked us “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m happy cause I’m playing with my friends”.

”I’m happy too”.

”I’m tired”.

“I’m a wee bit sad because I miss my mummy”.

Chatting to Roary sparked the idea of making our own puppets. Having a wee look around our Studio, we found lots of interesting things we could use!

“I’m using the bottle”. “I cutted it’s hair”. “Mines needs long hair like me”. “I maked eyebrows on mine and a nose”. “I drawed a smiley face cos I’m happy”.

“Angry face. I want goggley eyes on mine. He’s a wee bit angry”.
“I want goggley eyes too. Mine is angry. He’s in bed cos he’s tired”.

“Sad face”

”happy”

“I think he’s a wee bit sad. Maybe he’s tired”

”happy”.
Some of our puppets were very friendly and decided to sing, chat and dance with each other, sometimes we even used a special silly voice!

If we’re feeling a little shy, puppets are a fantastic vehicle to express our feelings and emotions, develop our language, social and emotional skills, explore creativity and build our self confidence. It encouraged us to communicate with each other, share our thoughts and ideas, lose our inhibitions and build on our relationships. As we created our puppets, we entered into our “flow state”, meaning we were so engrossed in our activity that we lost track of everything else around us! This can be very therapeutic and calming and an excellent way to regulate and reset.