Category Archives: Expressive Arts

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”.

 

Expressive Arts

Jewellery making skills

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Today the children were exploring in the sewing area and decided they would like to make bracelets, friendship bracelets and necklaces.

We  searched for a variety of materials which we could thread.   We found lots of exciting resources such as coloured beads, sequins, buttons, pasta and foam shapes to choose from to begin our creativity.

First we chose either pipe cleaners, ribbon or wool to use as our bracelet.  We took time to select our favourite items to personalise our own jewellery . The children demonstrated great concentration and were able to talk and share ideas with each other throughout, discussing what materials and colours they were using.

“I like this one”

‘“mine is sparkly”

” lots of colours”

“it’s hard to do”

During this time the children were exercising their fine motor skills. We  talked about how we found it a little tricky to thread through the wool,  and that the  pipe cleaners worked better. The sequins did not fit on the pipe cleaners, so a few of the children were keen to try it with the thread. This was difficult, but with lots of effort and perseverance, we were able to complete this.

“ My mum will love this”

“It’s so pretty”

The children were then excited to try on their jewellery  and show it off.

“Oh this is cool”

“Can I make another one”

“I have made one for mummy and my friend”

Expressive Arts

3D Sculpting in the Studio

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Today, we have been very busy showing off our creative skills in the Studio. We designed our own fabulous sculptures and combined clay and a variety of different art materials to create them.

We had lots of different materials to choose from such as foam shapes, colourful straws, feathers ,patterned buttons, ribbon and pasta shapes.

First we took some cold, squishy clay to make a base for our sculpture. We moulded it in our hands before carefully positioning and  setting our skewer to begin our creations.

We used good hand eye co-ordination while we were skilfully threading our chosen materials onto our sculptures. We demonstrated excellent fine motor skills, especially when it was a little bit tricky getting those buttons through the skewers!

”I like the feathers it makes it look pretty”

”I’m making mine all blue”

“I can put three bits of pasta together to make it taller”

”I think the buttons are a bit  tricky ”

We loved showing off our our final products and displayed them proudly in the studio.

Can you create some 3D sculptures at home ? You could try sculpting some creative art using junk from any recycling materials you may have.

 

Expressive Arts, Technologies

Cart Mill Engineers

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Today the children have been very busy in the Construction area.

They used their team working skills to discuss and create a plan to build a new bridge and roads.

They spoke about the different shapes and sizes of the blocks and how they would join together so that the road didn’t have ‘bumps’ on it .

“You need big muscles to be able to carry the big blocks”

“This block is wider than that one”

“We can make a ramp so the cars can go up and down,  the car can’t jump up”

They added in ‘funny shaped blocks’ to create  roundabouts for the cars to go round.

Once all the pieces were joined together for the road, they looked for bigger blocks for the bridge.

“This big one can be the start of the bridge and then we’ll add 4 bigger ones it will be so tall”

The children used their problem solving skills as they worked together to make the roads and bridge safe for the cars to drive on. They carried out a test run and a final check, then the bridge was complete.