Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts

Ahoy ship!

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The children in the Studio today created a fantastic story which started with a cardboard box .

The cardboard box became a boat and then the sea was added using a blue piece of material.

Pink material was wrapped around and suddenly there was a fish in the sea with the boat.  Then some brightly coloured mermaids joined  the gathering.


Next a crab with great big claws came to join the sea travellers.


The fish, mermaids and crab danced around the ship and the ship’s captain shouted “Ahoy ship!” and the fish said “We are swimming to America!”

The children’s role play recorded in this observation was truly creative.  They used the materials around them creatively, they worked as a team to tell the imaginative story and they directed each other’s movements like actors in a play.

“Play is the highest form of research” said Albert Einstein and we can’t agree more.

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Special Event

Exploring Tartan

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With St Andrew’s day this week, the children have been discussing all things Scottish. We decided to have a look at tartan fabric. First, we did some research on how tartan was made. The coloured threads are made from wool and you usually need between two and six colours to make the pattern on the fabric. A machine called a loom is threaded up and it moves forwards and backwards, weaving the threads together to make the design. We discovered that you need over 7 metres of material to make one kilt!!

We also had fun looking for our own family tartans. One child found out that theirs has some red in it red. Some of us could not find our tartan so we decided to make our own Cart Mill family tartans. The children were very creative using cars, wooden blocks and cotton reels rolled in paint before moving them across the paper to create a chequered, tartan design. The children also chose some tartan strips of paper to cut and glue onto their kilts. Cutting helps develop a child’s fine motor skills by encouraging independent movement of each finger, it also promotes hand/eye coordination.
We then decorated our room with our lovely new tartans. Why don’t you have a look and find out if you have a family tartan, if not, you could make one too!

We look forward to learning more about Scotland and its heritage this week.

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Clydebuilt Puppet Theatre

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On Wednesday we had a visit from Clydebuilt  Puppet Theatre. They told us three cautionary tales- The Ungrateful Crocodile which taught us to be kind to others who are kind to us, The Forgotten Treasure which is about being grateful for what you have and a good old favourite Red Riding Hood- The Wolf’s Story.

The children absolutely loved watching the show! There were lots of oohs and aahs and plenty of giggles too. Thank you so much to Steve and Leigh for the wonderful performances.

Expressive Arts

Creative Toddlers

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Today some of the toddlers got creative mark making, selecting their own paint colours and using large brushes and rollers, developing fine motor skills and muscle dexterity they even made their own natural brushes from recycled flowers.  They painted over different textures  eg Anaglypta , tinfoil, cling film, lining paper and  canvas promoting language development  about how the different materials felt. “That paper is rough” “the shiny is cold and smooth”The toddlers talked about the colours they were using and mixing. “ It’s yellow”  “ I like the blue paint best” “I’m making purple” They enjoyed using the roller and big brushes. “I want the biggest brush” “the roller is fun” The toddlers did great turn taking whilst sharing the resources.  The end result was a beautiful piece of colourful art. Well done toddlers!

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts

Interacting with music

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We have been continuing our musical learning in our Studio Room. We have been playing new games on our interactive board that teach us music.
We have  our very own interactive piano. The piano keys are displayed on the board and we use our musical skills to play the notes to make our sounds. We have been learning that the colours represent the notes. When you play a long note it has a long block of colour and a short note produces a small colour. When we play the piano scale, it will make a rainbow of colour notes. We have very much enjoyed this.

The next game we have is blob opera. It’s a very funny game that teaches us about singing in different pitches, the longer the blob goes the higher the note he sings. We can even take the blobs on tour over the world stages. We can record the blobs singing and listen back to what operatic song we made.

Finally,  we have the paint with music game. This game teaches us to paint with sound. We can choose from a range of instruments and make our marks across the screen.  This combines sound with mark making  encouraging children to make music following our marks. We can select from different canvases to create our paint with music.

We have very much enjoyed exploring music in this way, bringing music to life for our learners.

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Music and Rythmn

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Today was very exciting, we had a music teacher visit us.  We had our listening ears on!! . We sang some new songs and followed the actions to warm ourselves up.

We all got to choose a musical instrument and learnt their names, we played them very loudly and really quietly. We moved the instruments around high and low then left  and right to the beat and count of 1234.

Our teacher, a lovely lady called Lyndsey, then played a ukulele which is like a small guitar. We sang If You’re Happy and You Know It and then Sleeping Bunnies. As we all listened, and joined in, we got a sticker at the end. We are looking forward to next week to see what we will learn.  🎶.

Expressive Arts

Creating Silhouettes

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Today the children are  having fun learning about silhouettes “a shape or outline in a block colour with no detail but you can still recognise what it is”. The children had a look at some silhouettes on the board and then we were ready to create our own.
We chose one of the children to draw around . “Look how big I am”.  The children were very careful using the scissors to cut around our silhouette.  Some of the children wanted to draw around their own hands to make silhouettes. We then used black paint to cover our silhouette. The children worked very well together choosing different parts of the body to paint and sharing  the brushes and paint.

We then played a great guessing game using animal silhouettes . What do you think it is? “ a snake.” We learned new words today and had great conversations about body parts, animals and silhouettes. We are going to continue looking at silhouettes – look out for our silhouette creations!

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”.