Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Creative movement

Creative movement is a fabulous way  for children to express their feelings, thoughts and ideas.  Touch and movement are the earliest senses we develop.  Children explore the world around them through these senses and they may provide rich learning experiences that can influence our health and well-being (Reynolds. S. 2023).

Energetic play is an excellent way which supports children to progress their movement in different forms.  Creating their own obstacle course provided a wealth of opportunities to climb, balance, jump or crawl!

Taking turns, our children created the movement they would like to perform, and their friends took great delight in copying! Whether it be running, side stepping, rolling (which was a definite favourite), rotating or frog jumps, each movement provided the opportunity to travel through our space, develop our co-ordination and strengthen our gross motor skills.

Children enact repeated patterns of behaviour in play, known as Schemas, allowing them the freedom to explore their thoughts and ideas, which is an important part of their brain development.   Performing action songs with simple patterns such as head, shoulders, knees and toes and Grand old duke of York during Bookbug is the ideal opportunity to connect with our bodies and each other by creating tunnels, and improve our flexibility!


What better way to express our creative movements than to clear some space, pop on  favourite songs and dance our hearts out! This provides the opportunity to move freely, perform spontaneous movements and have lots of fun!

Article 29 – your education should help you use and develop you talents and abilities.

 

 

 

Let’s get creative🎃

From all the excitement of halloween last night the children were chatting with one another saying what they dressed up as. They had a brilliant idea and decided to use the junk modelling to create what they had dressed up as.


“I’m going to cover the box all orange.”
“Hedwig needs feathers and glue.”

Here is the children’s fantastic work!


“I dressed up as a pumpkin last night, like this.”
“I made Hedwig  because I was Hermione.”
“I dressed up as a train driver, this is my train.”

Through the week the children have also been super busy working together creating “halloween houses”.

“This looks like my house.” 
“I’m going to put my handprints on it.”

The children absolutely love spending time in the studio, it is an essential part of every child’s  learning, it allows them to think creatively, problem solve, explore, work independently or as a group and develop their fine motor skills as well as many more.

Happy Halloween 🎃

It’s a Hallowe’en fangtastic day here at Cart Mill. We have taken part in a variety of autumn learning experiences across each of our play rooms and garden.

We made spooky mud pie potions in our mud kitchen.

We also turned our water tray into a witches and wizards’ caldron using food colouring, shaving foam and different sized containers to create more potions.

We had opportunities to create Hallowe’en coloured crafts in our gross motor art area

In our Home Room we sang Hallowe’en songs and made Frankenstein’s green and purple sparkle playdough. We used our fine motor skills and imagination to mould our playdough into different shapes.

In the baking area we made witches fingers for snack (breadsticks with pumpkin seeds) it sounds like a yummy spooky snack.

In our Discovery Room we made a spooky block castle, using our creative and problem solving skills.

We also had our pumpkin potion experiment in our science area using our investigation and discovery skills.

And finally, in our Studio Room we were making Halloween houses, painting with our hands and creating wonderful pictures.

Some of our children came to nursery dressed up, here is a showcase of some of our many spooktacular costumes…..

Happy Halloween to all our families. 👻🎃👻🎃

Exploring, investigating and being creative with the pumpkins!🎃

Today in the discovery room we put some pumpkins down with some tools and gave the children time and space to decide, explore what and how they wanted to do with the pumpkins.

We cut the top of the pumpkins to investigate inside and the children guestimated there were “50 million seeds in the large one”

We looked inside and discovered the seeds, we used some spoons but was much more fun  with our hands, enjoying the sensory experience of feeling different textures.


“let’s use our hands”

“I’m mixing it”

The children then decided to make some ‘potions’

We needed some green water, white water and then put some magic cornflower to mix it all together using the pumpkin as a bowl!

The children enjoyed mixing the potion adding the slime of the pumpkin and seeds.


Now the potions were made, our friends could enjoy them too!!!

Article 31 You have the right to play and rest

The three little pigs 🐷 ….

In the story corner this week our focus has been the story book The three little pigs 🐷

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We all listened to the story . We huffed and puffed with the wolf !!

Earlier  in the week we had collected loose parts and resources that we thought might help us recreate the straw house, stick house and brick house.  Today after reading the story  we used our problem solving and building skills and were able to make some great houses for our pigs.

After re creating our story some of the children remembered that we had a jigsaw of the  3 little pigs they wanted to try.  The boys and girls worked well together to complete the jigsaw and were very happy when they finished . Well done .

After so much building and problem solving we decided to use our story spoons to create stories and sing some songs and rhymes. The children took turns choosing and helped each other learn some new words and actions.
A very busy morning in the story corner ……

Article 12 – You have the right to give your option and for people to listen.

Muddy Masterpiece

Today in our mud kitchen we were busy using some new tools to aid us with our muddy masterpiece.
But first before we start, we used our independence skills to locate our welly boots from the shed and our puddle suit from the trolly. We put them on ourselves but Emma was on hand to help us if it got a bit tricky.

Now that we are suited and booted it was time for messy fun. We collected our mud and used some of our new tools. We used the rolling pin to roll out the mud to make mud pancakes.

We used the wooden masher, to mash up our mud and make it like mud pies.

We found a little worm who had sneaked into  in our mud, but we put him back home again. We didn’t think he would want to be in our mud pie.

We mixed it up and added in some leaves, water and grass and finally it was ready to be served.

We had such fun in the mud kitchen today, exploring our creative thinking, drama skills, and gross and fine motor skills.
After such a wet weekend it left lots of muddy puddles we couldn’t  pass by the opportunity to jump in them.

I wonder what we will create in our mud kitchen tomorrow?

Exploding Paint Rockets 🚀

Today we have continued celebrating space week in nursery. Space week runs from the 4th of October, the date that Sputnik was launched in 1957, until the 10th of October, the date of the signing of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967.

In the garden we have been creating the constellations using the gem blocks,

enjoying lots of space related stories,

and, the most exciting part, making exploding space rockets!

Using old photo spool canisters, we filled them with powder paint, water and a piece of alka seltzer tablet. (Only the adults touched the tablets!) Then we gave them a shake and waited, at a safe distance, to watch them explode.

We made up three cannisters at a time with different coloured paints and made predictions about which one we thought would explode first.

Each pop, bang and whizz brought great excitement. Just look at the faces!

UNCRC article 31- Each child has the right to play and take part in a wide range of artistic abilities.

Space week with Bookbug 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀

Anyone want to come to Bookbug? The girls went round the whole nursery inviting everyone to join us….

As this week is space week this was our theme, we investigated our space mat with the children identifying ‘the moon’ We sang “Hallo” to Bookbug and had a little cuddle

We sang, danced and joined in with the song 5 little people in a flying saucer which went on for a little while as we had 15 people in our flying saucer…


We bounced twinkle twinkle little star on our Lycra and tried to bounce them into space, working together singing as we went.

We finished off  by enjoying our story ‘Goodnight Spaceman’ before singing goodbye to Bookbug.

We investigated numeracy, developed our literacy skills, worked together with our friends and enjoyed our visit from Bookbug!

If this is something you would enjoy with your child, Bookbug will be visiting us again tomorrow at 9.00 and 4.30 you would be very welcome to come along 😁

Article 28 You have the right to a good quality education.

Today We Were Puffy Painting 🎨

Today the children decided they would like to try making puffy paint which was a lovely sensory experience for them. Puffy paint is unique because it dries raised with a three dimensional texture. Working with the puffy paint requires a level of precision and control, helping improve their fine motor skills. The children were able to squeeze, spread, mix and decorate using their hand eye coordination. The children were loved this arty experience. The ingredients we used were.

PVA glue, shaving foam and paint.

“I’m making my puffy paint pink so I’m only putting a little red in”


“I’m making mine yellow, I’m only putting a little glue in”


“It feels like slime, and is so soft” Mmm the shaving foam smells nice”

“I’m going to paint a rainbow with all the colours I made” “I need to mix everything in”

Some of the children enjoyed mark making in the foam. “It’s wet and sticky” “ look at my hand prints they are blue”  “ I wrote an A in the foam because it’s at the start of my name”

We are going to look at other types of paint we can make, who knows what we will come up with!

Marvellous Models

Today in the studio the children have chosen a variety of the junk modelling materials or paper to create their own pictures and models.  They talked about the different sizes and shapes they were choosing discussing with one another what their ideas were and their Imagination’s were running wild.

“I have 2 rectangle boxes”

I have a circle”

“Mine is going to be a big castle”

” I need a small box and a circle for mine.

The children then got to work using their fine motor skills and hand and eye co-ordination.while cutting various materials they could add to their creations.

“I am cutting a big bit”

“Tiny one”

“I am doing big and small bits”

The children then began to use the glue, masking tape and cellotape to add various mareials to their creations.

“ I like the cellotape”

“ it just falls off with the glue”

”” “my flag is going to be big”

They used some problem solving skills as they decided the best way for it to stick together.

The children had great concentration skills and fabulous imaginations and were very proud of their own pictures and models.

“Jewellery box”

“My big castle”

“Picture for mum”

“Look at my telescope”