Category Archives: Expressive Arts

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.

Expressive Arts

It’s Autumn !!!

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The children in the studio are noticing the change in the weather. “There are lots of leaves on the ground”. We decided to look at some leaves and see if we could find them on our leaf ID Dial. The children pointed out the different sizes, colours and shapes of the leaves. This helps us discover the name of the tree that  the leaf came from. We then read a story about autumn time and the change this makes to our trees. “We like to kick the leaves in the park”

We then had some fun drawing and tracing the leaves some of the leaves were “bumpy” to draw over. The children chose autumn colours of pencils and crayons to make their 🍁 look real.  The children decided to hang the leaves from the white board so they could copy and draw round the shape of the leaf.

We have enjoyed learning about leaves today and, if you are out and about during autumn, we would welcome any leaves, pine cones and conkers that you find so we can use them for art work in our studio. Thank you.

Expressive Arts

Playdough Experts!

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In the home room the children have been particularly enjoying using the playdough in different ways.


They have been following our playdough recipe and are now very confident at making it themselves.

Once the children had made the playdough they used their imagination and turned the playdough into space rockets.

”3..2..1.. blast off”

“My rocket is going to the sky”

What else could we do with our playdough? Well some of the children even decided to open their own sweet shop and sell the best chocolates!

“ Here’s your chocolate, that’s five pounds please “

 

Expressive Arts

Colourful Fingers

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The children in the Toddler Room are always very expressive and creative so when we found some very colourful finger paints in one of the cupboards in the playroom they were keen to try them out.

At first they were very careful, using only one finger, testing out each colour.

They experimented with different colours, making swirls on their paper.

Very quickly they started to use their whole hands, feeling the paint between their fingers.

Its cold and squishy
Blue paint.

Small swirls with one finger became huge swirls and mark making with a whole hand.

Oh look at my colourful hands too
Pink hands

All the children had loads of fun painting with their fingers and hands and were very excited to see their finished artwork hanging up drying ready to take home.

Expressive Arts

Painting with Magnets

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Today in the studio we decided to paint using magnets.  We moved metal objects around the paper and over the paint to make patterns. The children chose the colours of paint they would like to use and practised their pouring skills to fill the paint trays.

The children were creative and used the magnets to draw paper clips and screws across the paint and make some lovely designs. This then expanded to making paint patterns on the spoons which were very effective. The children combined different colours to make different shades “This looks like a river” and “I have a pond for ducks”. The children also enjoyed discussing there techniques which improves their language and social skills.

We are looking forward to exploring lots of different methods of using paint in the new term.

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Let’s get Creative!

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At Cart Mill we love to explore our creativity in many ways.

We explored with paints on the ground and logs creating different patterns and pictures.

Then we mixed the paint to create our own colours and painted our hands!

Rainbow puddles! Using chalk and water we made lovely rainbows 🌈

When we finished painting we got the hose and scrubbing brushes to clean up the logs and the rain helped wash the rest away.

During this the children learned different ways to be creative, explored making their own colours and becoming more confident in their mark making skills.

How do you be creative?