Category Archives: Expressive Arts

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.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Number Stones

June 12, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Over the past week we have been developing a range of skills at our play area. From counting to recognising numbers, shapes and patterns, Gross motor skills and writing stories we have experienced it all. The children have been so creative.

I observed the children playing a game at the clay table, they were drawing pictures in the clay with different clay tools and asking their friends to guess what they had made. One child wrote the number 4 in clay.

“Guess what I’m drawing it has a shell on it” – A snail

“I draw happy face”

“I did number 4, cause I’m 4”

This lead us on to writing numbers in the clay, we made number stones and decided to paint them lots of different colours. When the paint was dry we brushed over them with Pva glue and left them to dry. Finally using a black marker to make numbers stand out.

The children have used these number stones to lead their own learning. We have used our counting skills and number recognition to rearrange the numbers in order from 1-10.
They have played lots of different games with the number stones, one game involves the children laying the numbers out in order and closing their eyes 👀 I take one number stone away and they have to guess what number is missing. To make it more challenging we mixed the numbers up and before removing one.

“It’s number 4” Next we added in numbers 10-20 to add fun challenge to their learning.

“I’m doing it upside down and the wrong way round 😂”

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Sequencing stories

June 12, 2024 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

The children have been enjoying telling their own stories using the puppets which sparked us to learn more about how a story is structured. We have learned that a story needs a start, where we choose a setting and meet the characters, a middle, where we develop the story and an ending.

We have used familiar stories, such as The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff to help us understand how to sequence a story.

We have also been creating our own books using an online tool called book creator. Here is Erin’s version of The Billy Goats Gruff.

Some of the children even felt confident enough to create their own stories. Grace used the story prompt cards to choose a main character and a setting then created a wonderful story!

Some of the younger children have enjoyed using the pictures in the books as prompts and demonstrated great confidence when sharing a story within a group. We even have some budding illustrators among our two year olds.

UNCRC article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Symmetry in our Butterflies 🦋

June 5, 2024 Miss Keith Leave a comment

The children have been fascinated by our butterflies and the patterns on their wings “ look the two wings are the same.

With this in mind we decided to make our own butterflies. We worked hard preparing our wings sharing our ideas and discussing colours.

” Butterflies fly in the sky so we paint the sky and added in a few clouds because it’s raining today “. We then got busy cutting out our butterflies.

The boys then added on some circles to the butterfly wings “ they look like little eyes”. Now they are ready to fly in the sky…..

We looked at another way to create our own pictures which shows how symmetry works this is a geometric shape or object which can be divided into two or more identical pieces.

The boys and girls worked independently and also co-operated with each other to chose colours of paint and discussed patterns for their butterflies.

We also used a mirror to give the effect of a larger image of symmetry.

I am sure you will agree we created some lovely pictures. Have a look when you are outdoors to see if you can spot any butterflies 🦋.

Article 13 – You have a right to find out things and share with others what you think.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking

Colour Mixing Playdough.

May 30, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

We have been learning how to make playdough all by ourselves. The playdough area is a self-serve area designed to promote the independent skills of all our children.

We have been selecting our ingredients and we are learning about the different quantities of these ingredients that we will we need for our recipe. (Following on from the new government guidelines we have been using heat treated gluten free flour in our recipe).

All our children aged 2-5 have the opportunity to make their own playdough and enjoy doing so independently.

This week in our Playdough area we have been exploring and experimenting with colour mixing.
First we made our playdough, by each collecting the bowl, spoon and ingredients we needed. We each choose a primary colour to make our playdough to start with. We had red, yellow and blue.

We were able to see if our playdough was ready, by testing if it was too dry and needed more water or too wet and needed more flour.

“more water”

“Too sticky, need more flour”

”it’s ready”

Once our playdough was perfect we set up our playdough station and invited our friends to come and join us.

We each took a pinch of two or more colours and mixed them together to see what colours we could make.

We used our gross motor skills as we rolled the playdough together to mix up the colours.

We were amazed at the colours we were able to make.

“I’ve made so many”

“I’ve made pink and purple and orange”

We discovered that we got green by mixing red and yellow. Purple by mixing the red and blue. And a pinky orange if we mixed red and yellow. We even ended up with a rainbow playdough mix.

Once we made all our new colours we got to work creating playdough masterpieces using the loose parts.

“I made a unicorn”

“A birthday cake, blow out your candles”

We also used a variety of different tools to help us mould our playdough such as scissors

rolling pins

and even used the loose parts to make patterns

We have been so busy at our playdough station. I wonder what we will make tomorrow.
Here is some of our playdough creations so far….

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

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking

Colourful Creative Coos

May 28, 2024 Miss Simms Leave a comment

In the art area outdoors we have been learning about a Scottish artist called Steven Brown. We have explored some of his Mccoo pictures and a couple of his Mczoo animals. We talked about how beautiful and colourful they were and that he uses lots of colours.
A few of the children were familiar with the Mccoo and had recognised it.

“ my granny has that in her house”

”I have seen that before”

Today we decided we would design our own Mccoo and work as a team to make a big, huge one. We gathered our resources and had a discussion on how we were going to begin. Firstly we drew a big circle for its head and then some horns.

We had a variety of resources to choose from including pallet knifes which Steven Brown used for various of his own pictures. The children used their fine motor skills to create different marks and shapes on the cow, we even managed to mix some of our colours together creating even more beautiful vibrant colours. The children took turns and shared the colours and utensils

“whats it going to be called.”

”can I think of a name”

The children then began rhyming off all there friends names.

Finally it was dry and we could cut our cow out and add some other details to our own cow.

We were then back to thinking about a name .

Then we heard at the National Museum of Rural Life in East Kilbride there had been two calves born. We looked this up and we decided we would call our highland cow Ishbel.

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.