Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Nature walk between showers!!

February 15, 2022 Mrs Barnes Leave a comment

Today we had a very interesting nature walk! Our mission was to collect leaves and acorns of all different shapes and sizes.
However, the first thing we spotted on our walk was was two little ducks! We thought this was very exciting as they were running around so close to our nursery!

The children noticed the ducks were different colours and spotted a duck pond for them! (A very large puddle!!)

“They are shouting quack, quack!” “They are so cute!”
“I love the ducks!” “They came to our nursery!”

We continued on our walk and the children managed to find lots of leaves and pine cones. They found both green leaves and brown leaves. They climbed small hills to reach the leaves they wanted.

When we were walking back to nursery the children spotted a big muddy puddle which, of course, they just had to jump in!! They had so much fun seeing how high they could jump and how big a splash they could make!

”I made a great big splash!” “The water feels so cold on me!”

Once we got back to nursery we did some printing with our leaves using different coloured paint. The children noticed that the different leaves made different patterns on the paper! We also dipped our pine cones in paint and rolled them across the paper to create some nice patterns.

Whilst making some amazing pictures with the materials we gathered, the children were developing their gross motor skills and had great conversations about their outing! What a fun morning we had!

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Social Studies

Team work makes the dream work

February 7, 2022 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Today the children have been developing their team working skills during a variety of different experiences.

We played ‘Feed the Teddy’ on the Promethean Board and worked together as a team to count up to 5 cakes to feed the teddy.

“That’s number 5 like my fingers, I have 5 fingers”

“Teddy is eating 5 cakes”

Next some of the children worked on a new painting technique, they had lots of fun mixing different colours in the shaving foam, and printing it on to the paper. The children made their own individual pieces and also worked together making larger prints.

“hold this side, I’ll get that one”

“1,2,3 down”

Finally some of the children were working together to build a garage for the cars. They built ramps for the cars to go up and down, and roads for the cars to drive on.

“Can you put that long plank up there so the cars can drive down”

“I put this one up here to stop the ramp falling”

Children develop very important life skills when working as part of a team such as problem solving, leadership and communication skills which they will need as they grow into adults.

Expressive Arts

Inspiring creations with playdough

February 3, 2022 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

Today in the Home room we have enjoyed spending time at the playdough station. We have learned lots of different skills while we manipulate the dough into wonderful creations. We used a variety of loose parts to inspire our creative thought and design processes.

First we made the playdough. The children asked for purple playdough. We decided to use our colour mixing skills to make purple by mixing red and blue paint together.

“First we need blue”

“Then red”

“Look what’s happened when we mixed them together. It’s purple”

After we had made our playdough, we began to let out our imaginations flow, creating our playdough masterpieces.

“I made a sun”

“

”Look it’s a unicorn”

“It’s a star wars alien space ship with lasers that are flying”

“It’s a face and the dark purple is the hair”

“I’m using the stones to make a happy face”.

We have been engaging fully with our learning today, building new skills are proud to show everyone what we created.

I wonder what we will make tomorrow with the playdough?

Expressive Arts

An introduction to rhythm sticks 🎼

February 2, 2022 Miss Mitchell Leave a comment

Today the children enjoyed expressing themselves musically using rhythm sticks and their bodies.

They were able to tap their sticks to the beat softly, quietly, loudly, up high and down low.

We decided which of our favourite songs and rhymes we would like to sing together and tapped our sticks to the beat of the rhyme.

“ I want to sing 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive”

“Let’s sing the wheels on the bus with our sticks”

The children asked if they could tap their sticks to music on the promethean board. We listened to some different music and chose Beethoven’s 5th symphony. We listened really carefully to see what instruments we could hear.

“I can hear the violin ”

“I can tap my sticks to the drum”

We then tapped our sticks in time to the music.

We decided to play a game called guess who tapped. The children were able to listen to where the sound was coming from.

“I think I know who it was!”

“That was fun”

Well done boys and girls.

Expressive Arts

Junk modelling robot

January 25, 2022 Miss Brown Leave a comment

We have been enjoying exploring the junk modelling area since moving in to the Studio room last week. The children discussed what they would like to make and made a plan to make a robot but what would they need, they decided to list all the things they would need.

”We need glue”
”and Cellotape”
“and of course, junk!”

The children used their imagination and problem solving skills to figure out how to make the parts stay together.

“You need to leave the glue to dry so it sticks”

The children worked together as a team making sure they followed their design so that everything was in the right places.

“paint it yellow like a bumble bee”

To finish off they decided to paint it yellow and add some cardboard tubes for arms.

The yellow paint didn’t cover the box as well as we thought, so the children improvised and used yellow tissue paper instead.

We are always looking for cardboard boxes (big and small), bottle lids, cartons, cereal boxes etc. to add to our collection so save your recycling and instead of putting it all in your blue bins, bring it in to us!

Expressive Arts

Let’s Sew 🧵

January 14, 2022 Miss Keith Leave a comment

Recently we have had a sewing table added to our room, The Studio. This has sparked the children’s interest and they have begun to show great creativity whilst using a needle and thread.

The children have being learning the names of all the equipment we use to sew. A needle (this can be jaggy) some thread and scissors (watch out they can be sharp !). The children have been developing their fine motor skills along with their hand and eye coordination when practising using the needle and thread on our sewing table.

As the children’s skills have improved we thought we could try to sew on a button . First we chose our button and reminded ourselves about the jaggy needle. We then tried to thread our needle – this was quite tricky and sometimes we needed a little bit of help. Some of the children chose more than one button and used their creative skills to make a pattern with the buttons. We then sewed on the button and cut the thread off at the end.
The children worked carefully and took time to make sure the needle went in the correct place. Concentration skills were very well used today and the children were very pleased with their buttons. The material and buttons were then used as placemats, parachutes and purses. Great imagination and hard work .

What will we sew next time ?

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Making Christmas memories

December 17, 2021 Ms Taylor Leave a comment

Today in the home room the children have been busy making their very own Christmas tree ornaments using salt dough and their own creative skills!

We demonstrated good social skills by working together to carefully measuring the ingredients and adding them to a bowl to mix.

We exercised our manipulative and fine motor skills and we strengthened our muscles through lots of mixing, kneading, rolling and cutting our dough.

We listened carefully and demonstrated we are very careful when using an oven as it can get very hot! We baked our dough shapes in the oven to make them hard.

We decorated our decorations with our own choice of coloured paint, glitter and snow dust. We then tied some beautiful ribbon to them so we can hang them on our tree,

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Bookbug came to visit today🥰

December 10, 2021 Mrs Johnston Leave a comment

Bookbug came to visit the boys and girls today, one of our favourite songs is ‘Hello everyone’

We chose our special friends from the magic bag and sang Incey Wincey Spider, Twinkle twinkle Little Star and Humpty Dumpty. Bookbug was so pleased with the lovely singing, he joined the rest of the toys with a bounce on the Lycra… Thanks everyone!

We then enjoyed a lovely story called Good Manners and we chatted about our own good manners we have.

To finish we all had a little dance to Christmas songs our very favourite was Jingle Bells 🔔
What a fun Friday we had!

Expressive Arts

Musical Mornings

December 8, 2021 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

Today in the Studio Room we had a very special musical morning. Our music teacher Lindsey came to show us some instruments and play musical games with us.
First we warmed up by standing up and singing and joining in with reindeer Hokey Cokey.
We sang a variety of other songs using our voices to sing and our bodies to join in with the actions.

We had good fun learning new songs some of us hadn’t heard before and playing new musical games.
We did sing a few Christmas songs we had already been practicing so it was nice to show Lindsey how well we have been learning our songs.

Lindsey brought some scarfs for us to use to take part in snowball dancing. We enjoyed using our expressive movements.

Then we got to choose which instruments we wanted to use from Lindsays collection that she brought along for us. There was a lot to choose from.

We played a game of Simon says, using the musical instrument. It was lots of fun and we had to listen out for the instructions.

We all really enjoyed our musical morning, learning new skills to broaden our expressive arts.
We are looking forward to next week to see what else Lindsey will teach us.

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