Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts

Shell-tastic Friday!

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Today in the garden the children have enjoyed exploring our magic bag full of special shells! No peaking!

We looked closely and noticed that there was lots of different patterns, colours, textures and sizes. The children had lots of interesting observations about the shells…

“That’s like a unicorn!”

“Look, I made a wee clam shell bed. It’s for a pearl fairy!”

The children used lots of mathematical language while exploring the shells, it was interesting to see the different ideas they all had. Some children enjoyed imaginative play and others liked sorting them into different groups…

“They’re the biggest. Because they’re so pointy!”

“Let’s put all the wee baby clams over here. The big ones can go over here with the unicorn horns. This is the pink side!”

The children had so many descriptive words to describe the shells including…

“It’s swirly whirly”

“Ooooohh it’s so jaggy!”

Loose parts is a great way to explore many areas for learning as it is such an open-ended experience. You can talk about size, shape, colour, patterns and much, much more. Make it whatever you want it to be about! What loose parts can you find in your home to explore?

Have a great weekend everybody! 🙂

Expressive Arts

Will the glove fit🧤🪡🧵

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In the studio this week one of our children drew around her hands onto paper, then she cut them out and decorated them. This sparked an idea “I want to make some gloves”

Using her problem solving skills she decided the paper would just rip if we tried to put it on her hands but she could use her paper hands to draw around and use some material. All of a sudden, she had a template!

“I want to sew my gloves for school, will I have a enough time before I go?

Once she selected and measured her material she had to make sure it was big enough for the size of her hand.
Mastering fine motor skills and the hand grip required to hold  and thread the needle, she got to work sewing. Well done!

We found a pair of gloves to help us problem solve how we were going to create our gloves. We discovered that the hands that we drew around didn’t match. They have to be symmetrical to be able to make the glove. We began sewing the glove onto the other material to cut around it after.

With a a little of help holding the fabric our super glove designer was able to sew all the way around the fingers. After a lot of hard work and concentration we tried the glove on to see if the glove fits.
The glove fits 🤩 Amazing Work!

“I need to make another glove because 2 gloves make a pair”

Sewing helps children understand the creative process, develop fine motor skills, improve their concentration, and learn how to work with their hands. This can help them become more independent and self-motivated.

Article 29 – You have the right to education which tries to develop your personality and abilities as much as possible and encourages you to respect other peoples rights and values and to respect the environment.

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Social Studies, Technologies

New and improved wormery

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Following on from our last up-cycling project, we can now say we have finished fixing our broken wormery.

The children have worked so hard over the past couple of weeks using the tools and their problem solving skills to put it back together. They worked as a team to decide what they would use and what tools would work best.

“This small bit is too small”

“ We could use this long piece of wood on the side”

“we need a little nail and a hammer to put it on we don’t want to break the wood in half”

“What does this do? it has a bubble in it”

We learned that the spirit level indicates whether a surface is ‘Level’ or ‘plumb’.

“What does plumb mean?” We researched it and found out that ”Plumb means that the surface is sitting straight, it is vertical” This meant that we could check the sides were running straight up and down. We also used the spirit level to check the wormery was level across the top and bottom. We found out this is horizontal!

Every tinker table experience is different, even if it seems the same. We learn new vocabulary every day and learn skills that we can transfer into our everyday life, especially as we get older.

Using a wormery for compost is an easy and environmentally-friendly way of turning food waste in to nutritious compost to feed your garden.

Now we just need find some worms to come and live in it and make up its bedding! 🐛

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Music with Michelle

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What a week it’s been in our Noisy/Quiet room this week. First we had the wonderful dancing talents of Peters mum who put on a dance class for our children. We learned so many new dance moves. It was so much fun.

And today we had the wonderful musical talents of another one of our mums. Her name was Michelle and she told us how she was a opera singer. She also told us how she teaches people how to play the piano.

Michelle had a beautiful voice and it was so lovely to see her sing and play the piano.
My personal favourite was when she sang “tale as old as time” from the Beauty and the Beast movie.
She played some classical musical on the piano and it was so lovely to hear it played so well.
We also joined in with some dancing, showing off our moves we learned  on Tuesday.

We would like to extend our thanks to Michelle for getting our piano tuned for us, it definitely sounds 100% better.

I would like to also send my personal thanks for all the volunteers that came into nursery to join in with my intergenerational project. It’s been great having so many visitors in our centre, teaching our children new things.  Children learn best when having fun and this summer it has definitely been fun.

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Making our own wasps and their nests….

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After exploring our real wasps nest last week we have now created our own nests. We made our very own paper mache nests.

We blew up our ballon’s and used glue and old newspapers to stick all around the balloon. We got quite sticky !


We had to let them dry overnight and then did it all again to make them really hard. The boys and girls then gave them a coat of yellow or black paint. “ Mine looks like a wasp”.

The children were able to self select their own resources to  add to their nest after painting them. My nest is going to be very yellow. We also found some textured paper which looks like the little holes that the wasps climb in and out of. The nests are looking really great now. Well done.

Everyone had so much fun making their own flying wasps. We had to measure , fold , colour and cut the paper then add a paper clip to help it fly . The children worked out that if you stood a bit higher up the wasps would fly better , but we had to be careful so we didn’t wobble and fall off !.

After all that hard work we had a try at directing our bee bot 🐝 wasp. We went forwards, backwards we had a practice with right and left . Some of our 🐝 wasps even manage to go down a ramp. Who knew that wasps could be so much fun .

Article 13-  You have the right to find out things and share what you think with others.

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

🌻 Sunflowers 🌻

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Our sunflowers have grown so tall in our garden. We have planted then from a tiny seed and have been nurturing them. After discussing how tall they have grown we calculated how many days it took for our sunflowers to flower.

It took 111 days for them to grow this tall.

”That’s a lot of days”

“They are taller than me”

Taking some inspiration from the beautiful sunflowers. We decided to paint some in the studio. We selected the colours of the sunflowers and have be busy painting some fabulous sunflower pictures this morning.

Here’s just a few of our amazing paintings. Look out for some coming home to brighten up your walls. 😃

Article 28 – You have the right to education

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning, Technologies

Summer holiday fun 🌞

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This week the children  have had lots of fun building dens and making summer homes in the garden! They have loved talking to each other about their busy summer plans. The children enjoyed sharing stories with their peers about all the fun things they have been getting up to, which sparked lots of creative role playing fun…

”I’ve got a beach house in Italy. We have pasta and clams there, that’s my favourite. I can make you some”

“Who wants gelato? Come and get it!”

We have been experimenting different problem solving techniques as we create our dens, using various resources from the garden and working cooperatively with one another offering suggestions to help implement our designs…

“let’s put it through the wee hole so it doesn’t fall down . Look, it worked!”

The children showed great imagination, exploring the garden to find different cosy spots to decorate …

“cheeeeese!”

After being so busy decorating our little summer homes it was time for a well deserved rest!

The children demonstrated great communication skills throughout as they worked as a team to help each other, and most importantly they had fun! Keep up the great work everybody 🤩👍

 

 

Expressive Arts

Creative Crafting

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We have been very busy in our Studio Room this week. We have been extending our crafting skills in the Junk Modelling area.
Our children have been keen to add different materials to their models. We introduced paper craft straws, pipe cleaners, feathers, shredded paper, and paper shapes and more thought provoking materials.

As well as extending our creative crafting skills we have  been practicing our scissor skills.

 

Our children have been so creative making lots of wonderful models.

We concentrate on getting all the bits to stick together. We can choose from sticky tape or glue. We are very independent in our junk modelling area.

We have been learning lots of new skills such as twisting, problem solving and helping each other our during our time in this area.

    

As well as making models in this area some of our children designed a game using the loose parts we have for crafting. They used the cups and the lids to make a “knock them down” game.

As we have been so busy making things all week our junk modelling area is running a bit low, we would welcome any donations.
here is some of the things we made that we are so proud of…..

Expressive Arts, Technologies

Upcycling project

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This week the children have been working very hard to start their up cycling project at the tinker table.

They began by  looking for something around the playroom that they could ‘Up cycle’. They found an old storage drawer that had missing handles on the boxes. They collected loose materials such as buttons, pipe cleaners, beads, bottle lids,  small wood chips and twigs to use as new handles for the boxes.


They used skills they had previously learned at the tinker table to join the new handles to the box.

“I can use the hammer and nails to put this wood on”

 

Once all the new handles were on the children noticed one of the drawers were missing. Using their problem solving skills one of the older children suggested making a sign to let everyone know that the new up cycled storage drawers belong to the tinker table.

The next job on the list is to up cycle our broken wormery, we are looking for longer pieces of wood if anyone has any lying about that they no longer need.

Expressive Arts

Let’s get painting 🎨

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In the studio today we have enjoyed exploring the paint using different utensils.

We have enjoyed stamping  the potato mashers, forks and fish slice’s in the paint and splatting them onto the paper to create different shapes and pattern. As we continued painting we discovered different ways to use the utensil to get different effects with the paint.

The children are gaining confidence in exploring and experimenting with different resources using the tools to develop increased control of fine hand movements.

The children take ownership of their painting by writing their name on their pictures.

Here is some of the art we created

Article 13 – You have the right to find out things and say what you think, through making art, speaking and writing unless it breaks the rights of others