Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Let me tell you a story…….

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In our story area this month our children have been having fun using the puppets to tell stories.
We went to the Studio room to get a box to repurpose and turn it into a puppet theatre. We picked the perfect box and got to work designing in.

We have used our imagination to create stories using the puppets and put on a show for our audience.

The children have had so much fun putting on these puppet shows and have made up some wonderful stories using their imaginative story telling skills.
We even added in some teddies who wanted to be one of the characters of our show.

We used finger puppets, teddies and hand puppets as part of our show.

Puppets are a great way to bring our stories to life. Our younger children also have great enjoyment using the puppets while In the story area.

We can use the puppets to help us re tell the story and help us with our literacy adding new words to our vocabulary.

Using puppets is a great way for our youngest children to get the most of of the story and help them build on their concentration skills.

Using the puppet story sacks is great way to help our children of all ages become familiar with the story and help them develop an awareness of characters and build on their recall and retell skills. One of our favourite story sacks is currently “Dear Zoo”. We enjoy matching which animal the zoo sent us.

Our story area is a fantastic place for our children to develop their literacy skills and go on a story adventure. We can  choose our own books…..

We can choose fiction books…..

or factual  books

We can read and listen to stories with the adults…..

or read them alongside our friends.

Next time you are here for stay and play why don’t you come and visit our lovely literacy story area.

Baking, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Welcome to the Cart Mill kitchen 😀🥤🎂

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Today in the mud kitchen the children were pretending to work at Cartmill Cafe. They discussed with each other what they going to make.
” I  love tomato soup” “I like the colour of it, Red is my favourite colour “

”I am making a birthday cake, a chocolate flavoured one”

“Hot chocolate, but you need to be careful it’s not too hot when you drink it, I like it with marshmallows “

”spaghetti bolognaise, with wiggly spaghetti “

The children then wrote their ideas on the menu

The children gathered their utensils and began filling and pouring their ingredients. They used gross motor skills to mix and stir added natural resources such as leaves, stick, stones and pine cones to their recipes.

“It needs to cook in the oven for 10minutes”

”I need more water in the soup”

”It’s still too hot, it needs a little water to cool it down”

We then showed each other our creations and  had a little pretend nibble.

“ Here’s a drink with a straw”

”My birthday cake has lots of candles”

” I have the bestest chocolate cake”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Block building, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Social Studies

“Let’s make the biggest train track in the world”

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We have been reading lots of stories this week and this has sparked some great ideas for the block area.

“I want to make a big office like that, I will need lots of blocks. My  mum goes to the office”

The children decided to choose their favourite book first and then make something from the book. We made a chart where each child ticked the side of their favourite book.

Fergus’s Scary night was the favourite! They decided on making a dogs bed for ‘Fergus’ to hide when he is scared.

“It’s triangle and square beds, Fergus not scared in here”. The children worked well together to build the dogs beds.


“We are building the biggest train track like Thomas, and a bridge look we can go under too”

Finally, the children built some of the buildings and structures from the story ‘All through the night’. “I’m building  the digger with a snow shovel that can lift snow and rocks, it has a train track under it”.

“This ones mummy’s office”

The children have loved creating things from their favour stories this week, using their imagination and problem solving to fit the pieces together.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning, Social Studies, Special Event

Diwali Celebrations!

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Diwali is a Hindu festival celebrated with much excitement and light. It usually involves the lighting of lamps or diyas, symbolizing the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil. People also exchange gifts, clean and decorate their homes, and participate in various cultural and religious activities during this festival.

Take a look at some of the activities we have been doing as we learn about Diwali.

Today in the garden we used power paint to create our own rangoli patterns. It was a great gross motor art activity that got our bodies moving.  Using bright colours the children selected their painting tools and got busy. Rangoli patterns are traditional Indian art created on the ground usually during festivals and special occasions. Rangoli involves using coloured powders, rice, flour, or flower petals to make intricate and vibrant designs. Rangoli is believed to bring good luck and positive energy to the surroundings.

 

On Friday we had a camp fire in the garden with Val. We helped to make some pakora and cooked them on the fire.  Outdoor cooking with a fire is great fun and our children at Cart Mill love to take part. The crackling flames create an exciting setting as the children prepare simple recipes connecting them with nature and basic cooking methods. Whether it’s toasting marshmallows, baking bread on sticks, or cooking pakora the open fire becomes an engaging tool for learning teamwork, patience, safety and an appreciation for the environment.

UNCRC

ARTICLE 2 – Non- discrimination.

ARTICLE 31 – Leisure, play and culture

 

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Special Event

Firework and Diwali Designs at the tinker table..

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This week at the tinker table we have been creating some firework and Diwali designs using nails, golf tees and coloured elastic bands.

This experience will help the children with their fine motor skills, hand and eye coordination whilst building self esteem and confidence while they are using the tinker table ⚒️.

Some of the children preferred to use the log which already has the nails in place. They were able to create some lovely designs and also recognise some of the shapes they had created.  “Mine is a triangle”.

”We choose the colours of the fireworks that we seen in the sky” . “They were very loud”. “I choose red because I seen red ones and that’s my favourite colour”.

At Cartmill Family Centre we wish all our friends a very Happy Diwali this weekend.

Article 13 – We have the right to find out things and share what we know.

Creative movement, emotional literacy, Expressive Arts

Creative movement

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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.

 

 

 

Expressive Arts

Let’s get creative🎃

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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.

Baking, Block building, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Snack, Special Event

Happy Halloween 🎃

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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. 👻🎃👻🎃

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Exploring, investigating and being creative with the pumpkins!🎃

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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

Expressive Arts, Literacy, music

The three little pigs 🐷 ….

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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.