Category Archives: Expressive Arts

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.

 

 

 

 

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Slime recipe

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I’m sure you are all aware that the children have been making slime. We have been learning the recipe and would love to share it with you so maybe you could try it at home.


In the mornings the children have been disagreeing about what to make at our malleable area. Some want to make play dough and others want to make slime. So we came up with a  way to vote to make it fair for everyone.  Everyone who wants to will vote by putting a tally mark in the box using the pictures to help. The box with the majority wins for the day.

“4 people want to make slime already”

“Only 1 choose playdough”

“Slime won”


They start by independently collecting all the equipment and ingredients  needed.

~ First step is to fill the jug with water

~ Add one cup of Pva glue to the bowl

~ Add equal parts water to the bowl

~Add 1 level tsp of Bicarbonate of soda

~Food colouring of your choice (optional)

~Add small amounts of contact lense solution (Asda one seems to work best) at a time.

~Mix until all ingredients combine and start to pull away from the bowl

~Knead until it not sticky. (This part is messy, the best way to get it off your hands is to roll the palm of your hand on a flat surface, it will gather and become stretchy like rubber rather than sticky.
The children learn so much from such a simple experience. Their fine motor skills are developing as they use their hand muscles to squeeze, roll and stretch the slime in different ways.

They are expanding their vocabulary as they describe the slime, what colour it is, what it feels like etc.

They are following instructions/recipes, measuring ingredients, colours, shapes…

…The list goes on.

“This is the best day ever”

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Introducing helicopter stories 🚁

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Helicopter stories allows children to become familiar with the role of being an author, illustrator, actor, character, audience and performing.

The start of the process is to use their imagination to think of their story and support can be given to scribe, introducing the concept of being an author and ‘writing’ their own story.

Next follows the role of becoming the ‘illustrator’ creating a picture to go along with their story….developing their mark making skills.

Next we have to move the furniture and create our stage for the children to perform, introducing the concept of a stage and where the audience should sit to support and watch their friends perform.

As the children perform, we can introduce the concept of characters and their friends are there as the audience,  if they need any help and support telling their story.

This is a story about ‘A crabby crab’

This is a performance about a ‘turtle’

Children are excited to create their stories and gain confidence in performing for their friends. We can change the process slightly for our younger children.  We are developing our literacy skills and using our imaginations to create wonderful stories 🥰🥰🥰

Article 28 You have the right to an education

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Colourful Mondays in the studio 🥰

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Today in the studio some of the children enjoyed a mark making
sensory activity involving lots of cling film and colourful paint.
The older children took pleasure in writing their names and drawing shapes in the squishy paint they also realised by  mixing the colours together they could make secondary ones.  The younger children made patterns with their fingers and delighted in feeling the squishiness of the paint beneath their hands. Some of the children thought that next time they would like to use their feet to see how that felt.

 

Later on a few of the children took part in some alphabet printing and  searching for the first letter of their name. We also did a letter hunt in some play foam.  G found a v for her Mums name .

What a lovely busy day we all had today at Cart Mill . I can’t wait to see what exciting activities we get up to over the rest of the week .

 

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!

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, Special Event, Woodwork

Christmas at the tinker table….🌲

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This month we have introduced a new tool. We talked about the safety rules and the best way to use our saw. This can be a tricky tool to master but with lots of practise we were able to start sawing different materials. This will help strengthen hand and arm muscles and also develop hand and eye coordination skills.

As we have wooden craft sticks at the tinker table some of the children wanted to make a Christmas tree 🎄. The children discussed the best way of making the shape and decided to draw it out first then using glue they followed the line they had made and pressed the sticks on. “ it does look like a tree”. The girls and boys were able to then self select their own materials to decorate the tree.

We also had some coloured craft sticks which we were able to stick together ,decorate and hang on our tree . “Beautiful “.

We had a very frosty week and the boys and girls were excited to see the ice 🧊. “Maybe it will snow and we can make snow men”. Our clever children talked about what they could use to make a snow man at the tinker table. We had white card board tubes but they were quite long “so we can cut them” a very good idea to get some sawing practise !. We decorated our snowmen and used our fine motor skills to thread through our pipe cleaner arms.

The craft sticks were brought back out this week. We made some different shapes with them and then the girls and boys decided the favourite was a Christmas star ⭐️ and a snow flake. They stuck the craft sticks together with wood glue and the have used very “sparkly “ resources to make them shine bight. The children have hung them on our Christmas tree and they look great and they might “ twinkle” when it gets

dark.

Here is a collection of the childrens great work . You maybe able to spot all the boys and girls hard work for Christmas in all our rooms when you are visiting the nursery.

Article 13 .. we have the right to play and explore.

Creativity, emotional literacy, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, nature

Superworm at Book Week Scotland 2024

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Last week in our playdough area we were celebrating Book Week Scotland by reading “Superworm”.

Engaging with our favourite stories and finding joy in reading helps to strengthen our children’s literacy skills and comprehension abilities whilst having fun. Reading books with our children also helps them to enhance their cognitive abilities such as memory retention, critical thinking and problem solving.

Today we had the curiosity cube in our playdough area and who was inside? Our very own Superworm!

We made pink playdough and had a go at creating our very own Superworm. We used some of our dough disco moves we have been practicing to help us roll the playdough into a sausage to make our Superworm .

We found some googly eyes and some sticky stickers to add to our Playdough just like the real Superworm .

We enjoyed making our Superworm and some of our children even wanted to make lots of friends for Superworm.

We counted them as we made them, promoting our numeracy learning through our play experiences.

Our older children wanted to make different characters from the story. Some children chose their favourite baby toad to create.

We decided to retell the story of Superworm using our playdough creations.  Some of us decided to change the story and create their own.

We had Super worm with his friends, Superworm saving the princess in the castle, Superworm with the zoo animals and Superworm the flying worm.

We shared our ideas with our friends and discussed different characters and events in our story. Storytelling provokes conversations between our children of different ages and stages of development.

Here is a look at some of our own Superworms.

We read the story of Superworm and used Superworm and one of our playdough toads to help retell the story.

“Superworm is super long.”

”Superworm is super strong.”

“watch him wiggle.”

”see him squirm.”

”Hip hip hooray for Superworm.”

I wonder what characters from our favourite stories will be in our curiosity cube tomorrow?  Don’t forget to help yourself to a book at our front door to share with your children at home as part of our Book week Scotland.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking

Creative Cars and Crafts

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This week in the junk modelling the children have continued to use their imagination to create their own creations. They have been using a variety of materials  and glue and cellotape to connect the different resources together. The children have helped each other and shared resources and ideas with each other.

” I am making a car”

”oh I want to make a car”

” we can make a car we both can go in”

” cellotape is stronger”

” glue is easier , but sometimes doesn’t stay on”

some of the children were making boxes for jewellery, making trains & decorating their boxes with lots of different colours.. they were able to use the glue and pick their own resources

A few of the other children had so much fun creating their own cars. They talked to each other on  what they would need for the cars and got to work. A few of the children added great detail to their cars.

“ 4 wheels”

” steering wheel”

” I need a coffee cup & cup holder”

” oh I want a coffee cup too”

I am putting a horn on my wheel”

” I need lights on mine”

Th children then had lots of fun in the cars, some then turned into choo choo trains.

“ we are going a shopping & taking the baby”

“ I am going to the beach”

” I am going to the park”

The children continued their play in the or cars and shared  them with their friends so everyone could have a turn.

Creativity, Expressive Arts

Different stages of clay

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At Cart Mill this week the younger children have been exploring the clay in the new 2-3 room called the pond.

We started off with a big block of clay and discussed what clay is. The children describe it as playdough. Yes, it’s very like playdough but clay comes from the earth. It’s cold and messy in your hands. As the children start to feel the clay. We encourage them to talk about how it feels and what do they notice about the clay.

“Hard”

“Good”

”Stuck on my fingers”

The children used their hands to pull the clay off they then explored the clay further by squeezing, rolling and piling up the clay.

“I’m getting a big bit”

”I’m rolling it”

We will continue to offer opportunity for the toddlers to use all their sense to explore the clay learning different techniques to manipulate the clay with our hands. Ie pinch, squeeze, roll and how to stick it together.

Our 3-5 children have been exploring our clay further by making clay models. With the change in season and frosty weather outside the children have been interested in making snowmen with the clay.

Recently the children have been making clay model and painting them but find the clay is fragile and can break easily. We started to discuss how we can make it stronger. The children suggested things like we need to be careful with it, not rolling it to thin and make it bigger.  I suggested to make the clay hold  together we could add some small sticks in the middle of the clay to hold the snowman’s body together.   While making the snowmen we challenged the older children to split their clay into 3 parts using the language of quality such as ‘some’ ‘a bit’ and ‘equal’

while we waited for our clay snowmen to dry. We set about making a winter wonderland town backdrop to play with our snowmen. This involved drawing some houses on cardboard  and cutting it out to create our sky line.

With the clay taking a long time to dry. The children have been enjoying lots of role play with the stone people and are excited to see there snowmen dry to paint and play with.

Our snowmen have been a huge hit with the children. Some children have started to create a whole family of snowmen. ☃️⛄️☃️⛄️