Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts

Cart Mill’s Creepy Cabin

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The children have had great fun this week working together to create a spooktacular creepy cabin.


We started on Tuesday by making spiders using pine cones and pipe cleaners. The children used their fine motor skills to cut the pipe cleaners and also to slot them into the pine cones, great work guys!


On Wednesday the boys and girls designed their own spooky pumpkin face using a variety of 2D shapes. The final result looks fantastic and very spooky!


Thursday involved making leaf ghosts. The children had fun painting the leaves and chatting about whether they were making happy, angry or scary ghosts.


Today we made witches hats and draw a variety of Halloween images on the points of them.


And here is Cart Mill’s Creepy Cabin! A collaboration of many fantastic pieces of work. Our spooky pumpkin in the corner, spiders, ghosts and witches hats hanging all around and even some broomsticks in the corner.
Absolutely fantastic work from all the boys and girls, well done!
🎃👻🧙‍♀️🕷👏

Expressive Arts

Pumpkin Seeds

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Today we reminded ourselves of our story. Pumpkin Jack. It was time to open our pumpkin and see what was inside ?.  “Its seeds”

The children enjoyed scooping the seeds out the pumpkins. They had great conversations about how slippy and slimy the whole process was. We gathered lots of seeds to make pictures.

The children were very create designing their own styles of pictures. We all picked our own paper, glue, pens and pencils . Using these resources helps the children develop their fine motor skills. “ I am making a big pumpkin “ and “ mine will have lots of seeds inside it”. We have some lovely pictures to take home , we hope you enjoy them as much as we did creating them.

 

Expressive Arts

Halloween Sensory Play

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Today the children used pipettes to draw up coloured ink and then dropped it onto the paper. They then used a straw to blow patterns. The children noticed the colours changing as the inks merged. They also noticed that the ink behaved differently on different materials eg “ It’s more watery on the tin foil” “ It doesn’t make patterns on the bubble wrap”

The children talked about the colours they were using and which was their favourite they were able to work together and showed great turn taking skills waiting for their turn of the pipettes.

In preparation for Halloween the children asked for something slimy and gooey to explore. The children decided that jelly would be best. The toddlers helped to make the jelly on Thursday  evening, they measured and stirred following my instructions closely. The children then  hid some natural autumnal items and some not so natural inspired by Halloween in the jelly.

The children used all five senses to explore the jelly. Some used tweezers to take the objects out of the jelly developing their fine motor skills, others dived straight in with their hands.  The children used lots of descriptive language. “”So sticky and cold””Jelly is delicious “ I’ve got an orange jelly” “I see a pumpkin “”This one has a pine cone in it” “This jelly feels good it’s wobbly and wet” “A bug it’s hard and black” “let’s see how many flowers we can get out”” I see three spiders they are tiny”.

 

 

 

 

 

Expressive Arts

Pumpkin 🎃 Fun

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The children are very excited as it’s nearly Halloween 👻. Today we listened to a story about Pumpkin Jack, a boy who had a Halloween pumpkin. After Halloween he put the pumpkin in the garden and over time the pumpkin began to rot away into the ground. The following year he watched a stalk grow from the ground and the leaves got bigger and bigger and a new pumpkin grew and was ready to use again for another Halloween.

The children had a look at our own pumpkins. We had different sizes, shapes and colours. We discussed how some were heavier than others, the smaller ones were bumpy and rough and the bigger ones were smooth and soft. The pumpkins felt cold and smelled like “pumpkins and witches“.

The children then designed their own pumpkin pictures This helped develop their creativity and fine motor skills using our art resources. They were able to choose their own art materials to create great pumpkin pictures. Well done.

Next week we are going to open the pumpkins and look inside!!!!. What do you think we will discover?

Expressive Arts

Pumpkin Playdough!

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Today, the boys and girls have been discussing Halloween and the things associated with it.
We had a look at some pumpkins online and some we had at Cart Mill. We discussed the different shapes and colours.

After discussing the pumpkins, the children decided they wanted to make their own pumpkins,  so we thought we would make some orange pumpkin playdough!

We even added in some cinnamon!

Once the playdough was made, it was time to create our own pumpkins…

Expressive Arts

Musical mornings!

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Today was a musical morning at Cart Mill. We have been learning all about percussion. We have learned that a percussion instrument is an instrument that makes a sound when it is hit, shaken or scraped. We have been using our information sheet to help us learn which instruments are part of the percussion section.
We had a look in our instruments baskets and picked the percussion instrument we wanted to play.

The xylophone was the most popular choice and we all took turns playing it.

We discussed how each instrument should be played. Do we hit, shake or scrape them?

Next we experimented with the sounds each instrument made. Was it a loud sound? Was it a nice sound?

We discussed pitch, rhythm and tempo. We played our percussion instruments fast, slow, and softly.

We followed the instructions of the conductor just like in an orchestra so that we knew when to play.

We sang songs and made our very own Cart Mill percussion band.
What other instruments can you think of that are percussion instruments?

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Book Bug fun!

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The children in the 3-5 room have been engaged in different rhyming experiences this week, and have shown an interest in a variety of rhyming nursery songs and story books too. We have been talking about words that “sound the same at the end” and what that means. We have had lots of fun games like “find the rhyme”. Maybe you could play something like this at home! Start by finding an object, and try to find a word that sounds the same at the end (or rhymes). Some examples we had in nursery were “sock” and “rock” or “spoon” and “moon”. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want 🙂

We have been enjoying our rhyming and singing nursery rhymes so much that Book Bug even came for a visit to hear it!! We look forward to hearing what rhyming objects you can find over the weekend 🙂

Expressive Arts

Let’s count with Bookbug!

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Today Bookbug came to visit! Bookbug knew we have been taking part in Maths Week Scotland here at Cart Mill and wanted to introduce us to number songs and rhymes.
BookBug brought his box filled with wonderful visual aids, puppets and books to help us have fun with our numeracy and maths skills through our songs and rhymes.

We started off by singing our welcome song to warm up all our voices.
We sang our number songs next such as 1,2,3,4,5 and 5 little peas. These songs teach us to count forwards in sequence.
We then sang songs such as 5 little ducks and 5 fat sausages to help us practice counting backwards in sequence. Ours songs also introduced us to early mathematical concepts such as adding and subtracting.

Then the stretchy Lycra came out and the puppets were bouncing and jumping up and down! We were using our listening skills, hand-eye co-ordination as well as numeracy and rhyming skills.

We all enjoyed singing number songs with Bookbug.

Numbers are all around us. Songs and rhymes are a fantastic way for us to learn and develop our numeracy and mathematical skills. What number songs can you sing at home?

Expressive Arts

Exploring shapes

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Maths week in the toddlers has been great fun! We have been super busy. Today we focused on shapes.

The children were exploring common 2D shapes on the geoboard. They were able to confidently name the shapes and use their fine manipulative and problem solving skills to put the elastic bands around the nails to create their shapes.

The children had lots of fun learning and creating shapes. We decided to get creative and use shapes for printing!

From an early age, children notice different shapes, even if they don’t yet know that the shapes have names. Giving children lots of practice with shapes helps them solidify their understanding of the two-dimensional structures. That knowledge of shapes gives the young children an advantage in many areas of learning.

Expressive Arts

Cars and ramps

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Today the children have  been super busy making ramps for their cars using the blocks. They decided to make their own ramps. The toddlers self selected their own paint colours and then dipped their cars into the paint and set them off down the ramp. The children noticed that some of the cars went further than others, some went down fast, some slow and that the tyres all made different marks.  They added some textured balls to see what different marks they left. “ That’s left a bumpy mark”  They learned some new concepts including stop, go, up, down, fast, slow developing their language skills and learning about cause and effect.

When asked what they would like to do next with the cars L said “ make a garage “ So they set about creating one. H said “we should use these boxes”. L said “ I’m painting it green, it needs to have a tunnel and space for the fire engine”. The children demonstrated great team work when planning together to create their garage. They were proud of their finished result and had great fun playing together.