Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts

Playful pom poms

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Today the children decided they would like to make something for themselves.  We had a discussions and thought we could make our own Pom Poms.

We had lots of different ideas as to what we could use pom poms for. Some children thought they would make nice decorations ,some thought they would be good to use for ball games or as a honeypot for Mr.Bear ! 🧸

I demonstrated how to make our Pom poms using wool and a  Pom Pom maker. The children listened well to my instructions and began  by choosing what  colour of wool they wanted to make their pom poms:

We talked about how their Pom poms will look and the different sizes they will be.

“ mine is going to be big”

“I like my pink colour”

Now it was time to cut our wool to create our pom pom the children began to cut with a little support needed. We weaved the wool in and out and around our maker until we had several layers This took lots of concentration and patience!

 

Once we had our makers covered we then wrapped a piece of wool round the middle of the pom pom and tied a knot..

Carefully we then separated our pom pom from the maker.

Now we could see our own creations!  A beautiful ;colourful ;fluffy pom pom!

“ it’s like a ball”

“It’s fluffy”

“Mine is big and blue”

“So soft”

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Holiday Tales and Shells

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The children have been returning to nursery after their holidays with lovely stories to tell us. Some of the children have also brought us shells which we have used for some creative crafts.

One of the children decided to make her own beach for her shells. First, she cut the wood and then separated her beach area, making one for water and another for sand and shells.

She then told us that she had been at the beach and had gone swimming in the water. Great story telling and creativity!

We have also been making our own shell and beach pictures including a lovely mermaid.

Whilst this activity is great fun, the children are also developing their fine motor skills , creativity and imagination as well as developing language and social skills when taking turns and discussing their pictures.

Today we used the shells to make a wind chime adding some beads to make different sounds.

We searched for shells that had holes in them or we made holes in them carefully using a nail and hammer, we had to be very careful to tap gently so that the shells did not break or crack.

We then threaded them onto the string, which was a bit tricky, before adding the beads. We now have a beautiful wind chime hanging in our garden. If you are walking past, why don’t you listen out for it on a breezy day.

Thank you for your summer themed donations and all your holiday stories, please keep them coming.

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Amazing Architecture in Cart Mill City

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Over the last few weeks, we have spent lots of time in our construction and block play area. We are so lucky to have a large selection of block play and construction materials to choose from here at Cart Mill. This gives us the opportunity to explore our creativity through designing and building our own models.

Using one of our house plans as a guide, we chose various sizes of wooden blocks to recreate our own houses! Using our knowledge of shapes, positional language and by working together, we created a living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom!  By adding loose parts, we were able to add some extra special features!

“There’s a kitchen. This is the living room. We’re going to make a dining room”.
“The kitchen is next to the living room.  The bathroom is behind the kitchen.”
“It’s got 2 toilets”.
“These are the statues. My mummy has statues in the bathroom”.
“It has a chimney. Steam comes out of it and the bad guys can’t come in!”  “This is my bedroom.  I’m putting a cushion in to lie on”.

Using smaller blocks gives us the opportunity to develop both our fine motor and problem solving skills by discovering how to connect the blocks together to build our models.

We all love playing with our stickle bricks and Lego.  Sometimes it can be really tricky to fit the blocks together. With a bit of patience, perseverance and using our fantastic imaginations, we have created some fantastic models!

“It’s a birthday cake with candles on it”.
”It’s a T”.

“I made a play park.  It has a climbing frame, a slide and a swimming pool”.

Working together and sharing our ideas, we were able to create our very own Cart Mill Lego city! Isn’t it fabulous! We think we would have lots of fun living there!  Can you recognise the special people who live there?

“

“The swimming pool looks like so much fun. It has a bit to jump off into the water and you go up the stairs and through the door to get to the slide.  It’s got a cafe if we are hungry!”.

To challenge ourselves further, we decided to take our block building  outside! It was so much fun! Working together, we placed the blocks carefully in front and behind each other to create a path all round the Cart  Mill garden! It was sooooo big and meant we were able to walk all round the garden without our feet touching the ground (the floor is lava after all!).

 

 

 

 

Expressive Arts

Getting Creative with clay using sea shells 🐚 🐚

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Today in the Studio room We have been sharing stories of summer, our holidays together and the fun days we have had with our families at the beach. 🐚  😎 ☀️
We have made sand castles, splashed in the sea, and when digging in the sand or looking in rock pools we have found and made sea shell collections. We looked at some shells we have in our nursery and discussed the different shapes, sizes and colours they were.

“This one’s got a crab in it” 🦀

 

“It feels smooth”

“This is a big flat one” 

“This one is bumpy”

“This one is round and bumpy “🐚

“ we can hear the sea in it”

First we made a round ball shape by rolling the cold sticky clay in our hands. We then pressed it down to make a flat shape before pressing our shells on to the clay to make some beautiful prints and patterns.
We found by pressing the shells into the clay we could make our own fossils!

Creating art with clay and shells gave the children endless ways to get creative and explore different textures through nature.

Clay also stimulates the children’s curiosity and imagination whilst exercising their fine motor skills when rolling, pressing and moulding.

We sat our clay shells  aside to dry out before we painted  them to make some colourful decorations for our nursery and home gardens.

“ I am going to paint mine blue and white”

“ I want to put on lots of colours on mine”

” I am going to put on lots of glitter on mine”

The children express and developed there creative skills and strengthen there fingers and hands and arm muscles.

What can you make at home using your sea shell collection? Let us know how you can be creative ! 🐚 🐚 🐚 

 

 

 

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Kandinsky kids

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We have been learning about different styles of art while developing our gross motor mark making skills and this morning we have been looking at the work of the artist Kandinsky. We discussed how the circles could have been created and the different colours he used. We noticed each adjacent circle was a different colour. Then we started creating our own using the mini mops and a selection of colours.


“It’s like a rainbow Easter egg!”


“It looks like a tornado. You’re going to get sucked in to it!”

Then we decided to try a different method and use brushes to make smaller circles.


“Look at all my spirals.”

Absolutely amazing pieces of art created and some good messy fun!

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Textile Textures

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Today the children explored a variety of materials and different textures in the sewing area.

We looked at cellophane,carpet, silk, felt, bubble wrap and hessian. The children were able to describe how these materials felt.

“This is a bit jaggy”

“It is so soft”

“This one is smooth”

“Oh that’s crinkly”

We cut the materials into squares and thought it would be a great idea to make our own texture board.  The children chose the materials they wanted to use and were keen to create stitches on them, using good hand and eye co-ordination we were able to put together a selection of materials for our board.

We then displayed our work on the texture board in our sewing area.

The children were very proud of their hard work and the children invited their friends to come have a look and feel the different textures.

Expressive Arts, Snack

🍦🍧😎 Cool Fridays 😎🍧🍦

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🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️

After a long hot week we cooled off today with some tasty treats!

We talked together about different ways we cooled ourselves down when the weather was really warm and made us feel really hot!
There were so many great ideas!

“I play water fights”

“I drink lots of water”

“I use sun cream and I wear a hat”

“I eat ice cream and ice poles”

”My favourite is to eat ice lollies”

We all agreed that one of the best ways to cool down was to eat ice cream or ice lollies! This gave us an idea… to make our own ice cream shop where we could sell all sorts of ice creams, ice lollies, milk shakes and ice poles.

We used a selection of craft materials to make our icy treats and our ice cream shop.

We then each took turns to be the shop keeper or be the customer.
Which cool treat would be your favourite?
”I like a strawberry cone and sauce”

”mmmmm mint choc chip is the best”

“I like to lick the ice lollies”

To finish our day we made it real – we had some icy treats at snack time! What a great way to end our hot and busy week, before the rain came! 😎

Hopefully Mr Sun will be back soon! 🌞

🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️

Expressive Arts

Cart Mill Construction Site 🏗 👷🏻‍♀️👷🏻‍♂️

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Today the children have had lots of fun exploring the small world construction site! We worked as a team to make our pretend cement, simply using shaving foam, sand and a little oil. We had fun mixing it all together, and see the textures changing to make our cement.

We of course had to follow the health and safety rules!

 

We had fun being creative and thinking about ideas for designs we wanted to make. “I want to make a strawberry picking field”

“I want to make  a football field!”

We explored all the different shaped blocks to see how we could bring our ideas to life. “I need a round blocks. Because it’s a circle shape”

  

 


“Dumper truck. Make it all stick together”

“My dumper truck is empty. I need more cement”

 

“look, it’s nearly taller than us!!”

“nice and smooth”

“I’m making a big pointy tower. It’s very sticky!”

“I’m making a little town. There’s a cafe in it. Would you like a sandwich?”

The children had lots of fun being imaginative, and gave each other lots of tips and tricks to make our creations and help each other. This is  a great way to develop a variety of skills such as problem solving, role playing, fine motor/manipulative and social skills etc, and most importantly, it’s SUPER FUN !! Well done everyone 😄

 

 

Expressive Arts

Cardboard Creations

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Today in the Studio Room we were perfecting our painting.
We enjoy painting on a variety of resources on the floor, on the easel, on paper and on boxes etc, the floor is our canvas. Today we incorporated all of these and used cardboard to make our own DIY easel.

First we used recycled boxes from our junk modelling area to create our easel and used tape to secure it to the floor.  We all love using the sellotape dispenser.

Next we put on our painting aprons, selected a paint pot and brush and selected which paint we wanted to start with. We are very independent in our art area and can pour our own paints.

  

Then it was time to start our painting masterclass. We each shared our ideas of what we were creating. We all shared and swapped the paints to ensure we had all the colours on the colour wheel to choose from.

   

We worked hard using our fine manipulative skills to control our paintbrush as it glided over our paper creating our works of art.

 

Some us were feeling inspired to try using sponges to add texture to their paintings.

 

What fun we had, inspiring our future artists. Maybe one day we will grow up and be like Picasso or Van Gogh with our paintings displayed in an art gallery.

Expressive Arts

Exploring the tinker table

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Today the children were exploring the different tools and wood at the tinker table and planned out what they were going to make and what tools they would need to make it.

“ I want to make a boat”

We discussed the safety rules we need to follow when using the tools and what we need to wear to keep our hands and eyes safe.

”We need to wear safety gloves”  “and goggles”


The children collected the things that they needed and got to work.

”I need some wood and a hammer and nails” “and some glue”

The nails are all different sizes so they had to measure against the wood to make sure the nail didn’t stick out the other end.

“I need different shapes of wood for my boat like the round bit for the sail, I need to glue it though because it’s too long”

“I want to use the hammer” “ This ones a bit tricky though”

They explored the different woods, some were softer than others.

The children are developing their hand eye co-ordination as they hammer the nails in to the wood.

“I want to saw this bit of wood”

When using the saw we mark on the wood with a pen which bit we would like to cut on so that it’s clearer to see the cut. Sawing takes large muscle movements when moving it back and forwards and develops Gross motor skills. “That was hard work”.