Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts

Hallowe’en Art🎃

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Inspired by everyone’s Halloween costumes, the children decided they would like to create their own Hallowe’en art.

First of all the children picked their own materials to make their art, varying from black and orange coloured ribbon to Hallowe’en sequins and craft tissue paper in different shapes and sizes.

They then used scissors to cut the card to their preferred size and selected glue and glue spreaders.

“ I want black and orange card, they’re Hallowe’en colours”

”mines looks like a spooky Hallowe’en spider” đŸ•·

“I’m going to hang mine up like decorations”

The children have been very creative and have made fabulous pieces of Hallowe’en art.  Happy Hallowe’en everyone🎃


Expressive Arts, Special Event

Diwali Festival of Light

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Today in the noisy quiet room we had a chat about Diwali and learned about the festival of lights. We watched some videos of traditional dancing and decided to give it a go ourselves since we love to dance.

We used a selection of materials and musical instruments to take part in the Diwali celebrations.

First we selected some brightly coloured material to make our own outfits ready to dance.

Then we put on some traditional music and enjoyed some dancing with our friends.

Happy Diwali celebrations to you and your family

Expressive Arts

Tinker table tools

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Today in the Discovery room we have been learning what we can do with our tools. We have different stages of development and have experimented with resources that give the children their own challenges which helps them all build their confidence and self-esteem.

The children have worked well together as they discussed the different ways they could use the tools. “I am very strong “. While using the tools the children are developing their fine motor skills and hand and eye co-ordination skills.

We had fun finding out which resource was the hardest and which one was easier to hammer or screw in nails . “ I can hammer in nails they look like a face”

With a little help we were able to saw the cardboard tube into pieces this was a bit tricky. We did remember our safety rules  “ I will keep my fingers over here”

 

As always at Cartmill we like to recycle as many materials as possible and after removing all the nails from our pumpkins we chopped them into pieces and decided to give them to birds for lunch.

We look forward to our next introduction to new tools and equipment and what we can build.

 

 

Expressive Arts

Rangoli Patterns

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Today in the Discovery Room we have been talking about Diwali, in particular Rangoli patterns.

We learned that Rangoli patterns are traditionally made using coloured rice or dry flour which was mixed with turmeric and other natural colours. They can be created using different geometric shapes in the form of flowers, petals, stars or lanterns.

Families celebrating Diwali create beautiful Rangoli patterns and place them near the entrance of their homes to welcome Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, in the hope this will bring them good luck and prosperity.

We decided we would use our fabulous knowledge of shapes, patterns and positioning to create our very own Rangoli patterns.  We had a look to find some Rangoli patterns to give us some inspiration!

It was lots of fun choosing which loose parts we would use to create our patterns.  Of course we had to make sure we  chose lots of different colours and the shiny shapes and coloured gems were definitely our favourites!

Using the patterns as a guide, we carefully chose which loose part would fit best and carefully positioned them on our patterns.


“I’m using the gem. It’s a circle.”

”I like the shiny shapes. That’s one’s a diamond.”

”I put the button in the middle. It’s a big circle.”

“I like the buttons the best.”

”I found a shiny one.”

It was a bit tricky to fit some of the loose parts in as they were the shape! Working together, we were able to solve the problem and use some of our triangles to make a diamond!

Don’t our Rangoli patterns look beautiful.  Next time we are going to draw and create our own!

 

 

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Today we had fun painting in the style of Kandinsky😁

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Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract art he is known for his inventive use of of colour and one of his most well-known images was a colour study with concentric circles. The children decided to recreate this famous piece of art work putting their own unique spin on it. First
We went on a circle hunt around the nursery to find objects we could use for our outdoor Kandinsky painting. “There’s lots of different shapes in here look here are two circles we can use” “ Look this would make a good circle shape it could also be for a robots eye” “I have shapes we could use to paint circles on my tower” “ cardboard tubes would make good circles”

We had great fun using the objects we found to make our circle designs developing our gross motor skills. The children were very creative making their painting. “ I want to use the plunger” “ I think the cardboard tube makes the best circles” “


“Im using the blue paint and the tube to make a big circle then I’m putting a smaller one inside it” “Circles, everywhere big ones small ones and tiny ones too”


The children were excited about their finished art work and we all think it looks amazing. Well done everyone great team work đŸ€©

Expressive Arts

It’s all about the Monet

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We have enjoyed learning about kandinskys abstract art the last few weeks at our art provocation area.
Today we introduced a new artist and art style.  We will now be learning about Claude Monet.
Monet was a French painter who was the founder of impressionist painting.
We used our technology skills to research who Monet was and look at a picture of him.

We decided to use water colours to recreate one of his famous paintings. The water Lilly Pond that he painted in 1899.

We found a picture of the painting and we each talked about what we seen within the painting. We seen “trees,” “a bridge,” “lily  pads”


We discussed the colours that Monet used. We used our thin brushes, paint pallets and water to create our own  representation of the Water Lily Pond.

We used our colour mixing skills to make our purples and greens we needed.

We used the picture as inspiration for our art work.

We enjoyed using a variety of skills such as fine manipulative skills when controlling our paint brushes. We were communicating and sharing learning with each other.

We worked really hard to create our pictures and enjoyed sharing them with each other.

“I made mine a card”

“I used purple”

“I mixed together the colours”

“Look at mine”

I wonder what Monet painting we will look at next.

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Let’s have a shake shake shaking Friday🎉

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This morning the children got creative, designing their own shakers!

We looked around the nursery for some noisy and quiet resources choosing for ourselves  the shakers we wanted to make.


We used Pom poms, shells, sprinkles, beads (as we have lots of different allergies at nursery)

We had a try out to discover if we had to change our quantities, if we were happy with the volume of our shakers


We had a sing song to practice our shakers singing Baa baa Black Sheep and Twinkle twinkle Little Star, we were so noisy that Bookbug decided to join us đŸ„°

You can make your own shakers at home with anything noisy and anything that can be sealed so you can shake shake shake it all day😁

 

 

Expressive Arts

Creative feelings.

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Today the children had fun exploring and experimenting with loose parts to create different faces in the playdough, using their problem solving skills to show different facial features!

“look, happy!”

“Use the pipe cleaner for a mouth. You can make it all bendy”

We have been exploring our emotion pebbles in the playdough area too, and talking about different emotions we feel and why. We discussed what different emotions we feel, and what makes us feel that way


“I’m scared of the dark”

”I feel tired after I go to soft play”

“I feel sad when my papa Alec’s office is full of toys!”

“I need to do eyelashes”

”I feel sleepy when my mummy reads me a story. Like this
”

“It’s a shocked face”

The children were able to reflect on times they have felt different emotions, and had lots of conversations with their peers about their feelings. They helped each other choose different resources to convey their ideas and worked really well as a team. Great work everybody đŸ€©đŸ‘

 

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy

We’re going on a leaf hunt 🍁🍂

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This morning we read the story of We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger. We started by discussing what we know about the season of Autumn.

”The leaves fall down off the trees.”

”They changed colour.”

Then we all sat beautifully and listened to the story. We learned that leaves on different types of trees will turn different colours. We particularly liked the picture of the red leaves from the oak tree.

After listening to the story, we recreated the story by acting out the different parts.

We collected leaves at every stop on the way
..


then we used them to jump and play!

What wonderful Autumn fun!! 🍂

Expressive Arts

Patterns and Positioning

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This week in the Discovery Room we have continued to explore our interest in shapes and loose parts.

We have selected from a wide range of loose parts to create our beautiful pieces of transient art. This sparked lots of interesting conversations where we shared our views on which loose parts are our favourites! Most of us decided we like buttons the best!

“
”I made a cat. The lollipop sticks are the whiskers. The triangle blocks are the ears.”

”I made a T for my name”

”I made a wee mouse.”

To add a little challenge and further extend our shape knowledge, we decided to use loose parts to see if we could continue a simple pattern, and create our own.

“Cork, circle, cork, circle”.

”cork, button, cork, button”. “The cork and the button look the same shape. They are circles.”

A number of us are demonstrating an interest in the schema of positioning.  We have demonstrated this through arranging objects, lining up items and sorting items into different boxes.  This helps us develop our concentration, be able to recognise differences and similarities in objects and to explore patterns and problem solving.


“Look I used a shell, then a cork, shell, cork, shell, cork, shell, cork. I putted a button on the top. Blue, green, blue, green. I putted a cork on top of the corks. It’s so high.”

Loose parts are a great way to developer creative, problem solving and numeracy skills.  Why not have a look and see what loose parts you can find at home.  We would love to see your wonderful creations!