Category Archives: Froebel

Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Outdoor Learning

Forest fun

May 9, 2024 Mrs Hannah Leave a comment

It’s been a fun filled couple of weeks for our Wednesday forest schoolers!

As we are so experienced and have demonstrated we can play safely in our forest, we decided we would like to build our own rope swing! Luckily Val was on hand to find a nice strong tree and put our swing up for us. We had so much fun taking turns to see how far we could swing!

“look at me I’m going so high!”

Climbing trees has been our favourite thing to do. After a wee bit of help and some practice, we are now able to assess our own risk and climb to a safe height by ourselves!

“Look at me, I’m swinging like a monkey”

”I’m split man because I can do the splits!”

Our imaginative thinking has shone through in our forest. With sticks as our inspiration we have built campfires to go camping, been doctors helping look after our friends, been old people using a walking stick, and have created our own X marks the spot and an equals sign!

Our Forest truly is a magical place! We wished “we could live here” “can we go camping”. We can’t wait to come back next week!

Article 12 – (respect for the views of the child)

Article 28 – (right to education)

Article 29 – (goals of education)

Article 31 – (leisure, play and culture)

Creative movement, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Social Studies

Dandelion tea in our mud kitchen cafe

May 1, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

We have really been enjoying our mud kitchen area in our nursery garden. The children have particularly enjoyed the role play aspect of our mud kitchen.

We have been using the mud, water and utensils to create lots of wonderful muddy meals. The children have turned our mud kitchen into the “mud kitchen cafe”. The children have been taking it in turns to see who will be the cook and who will be the customer. This has been especially enjoyed by our 3-5 year old children.

This week in our mud kitchen cafe some of our children noticed there were some dandelions growing in our garden and wanted to use them as part of the ingredients for their muddy meals.

The cooks got to work mixing, whisking and cooking the delicious muddy meals and daffodil tea.

We were using so many skills during our role play, such as gross and fine motor skills, creative thinking, imaginative play, problem solving and learning new vocabulary.

Once the food was cooked at the kitchen it was time to take it to the table to serve the customer

and pour the dandelion tea.

We also used our early writing and mark making skills to create our menu board to tell the customers what they could buy and how much it was going to cost them.

Our older children have been great role models for our younger children helping them to develop new skills and guiding them how to play.

Within our mud kitchen we have noticed the enjoyment the 2-3 year old children have gained from pouring and filling using the mud kitchen utensils. We set up a pouring and filling station on our tough tray in the mud kitchen to engage our younger children and follow their interests.

The children had so much fun using the water to fill up the different sized utensils and containers pouring them from one to the other or down the plastic gutter.

Our younger children were using their pouring and filling skills while developing their curiosity.

We had so much fun mixing and whisking the water just as if we were cooking in the mud kitchen cafe as well.

We loved pouring and filling the water so much we even made a puddle to splash in.

If our hands got too muddy and we didn’t like it we used our water jugs to wash away all the mud from our hands if we wanted to continue to play before going inside to wash our hands with soap.

I wonder what we will be serving in our mud kitchen cafe tomorrow?

Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play.

Creativity, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Mindful moments

When Harry Potter came to Forest School!

May 1, 2024 Mrs Hannah Leave a comment

It was a dull and wet start to forest school today, but in true Cart Mill style we didn’t let that dampen our enthusiasm! We popped on our waterproofs and off we set! As we are such experienced explorers, we were able to navigate our way there, remembering the busy roads we had to cross and to look our for “the white house with the rainbow flower in the garden we saw last week!” so that we knew where to turn to find our forest. Being our usual inquisitive self’s, we spotted some signs along the way. At Field Grove we were able to spot “that’s an L for my mummy’s name.” “My mummy has an L too, and my brother has a r”.

When we arrived at our site we remembered all the hazards we had chatted about last week and were able to carry out our own risk assessment and set our boundaries.

Bug hunting has been a real area of interest and we have been doing lots of research on bugs. What better place to search for “real” bugs than in our forest! Off we set with our magnifying glasses 🔍. It was so much fun to search under logs, on trees and even in the mud to see what we could find!

We were amazed to find “sammy snail”, “super slug”, “colin” who was a millipede and a whole family of woodlouse! Who knew we would find a baby worm that “looks like an angry eyeball”. Dr Doolittle had better watch out! 🐛

“It’s a C for my name”.

“Look it’s crawling on my arm!”

Of course as it was so wet we decided our bugs would need a bug house! After lots of discussion we collected our building materials. Working together we built a “super special” house for our bug family.

“This can be the roof.”

“This stone is big. They can sit or sleep on it.”

“This can be the food. They might be hungry. I’m hungry, when can we have snack?”

After a quick snack and a wee recharge we noticed the sun had appeared! Off we set to find some sticks! This sparked an impromptu game of forest “freeze” and “unfreeze” using our “Harry Potter wands” while “Harry Potter” himself flew above us on his “broomstick” along with “a flying car that goes invisible”.

“I’m Harry Potter flying on my broomstick”.

”I’m flying. I’m in a flying car. I can spread my wings and fly over you”.

Before we left we had a wonderful mindful moment, sparked entirely by a cry of “stop talking and listen”. “I can hear the birds. They’re making a woo hoo sound”. “I can hear the wind blowing through the trees”. We even spotted a pigeons nest high up in the trees.

Our tired legs got us back to Cart Mill safely, even spotting a number sign along the way.

“It says 20”.

This week we have been navigators, explorers, bug hunters, builders, flying cars and our favourite of all, Harry Potter! We truly do have fabulous forest schoolers at Cart Mill and we can’t wait for another amazing adventure next week!

Article 29 – I have the right to an education which develops my personality, respect for others’ rights and the environment.

Froebel, Outdoor Learning

Return to the Forest

April 17, 2024 Val MacLean Leave a comment

This week we have taken two groups to the forest to experience learning in the wild! Forest School is a fabulous experience that we run for our pre-school children which has many benefits for them. Over the past couple of days we have seen the children flourish in their new environment. As it was our introductory week, we spoke about hazards and risks and how we were going to keep safe. We set some boundaries, they were far away so we had lots of space to explore but we could always be seen by an adult!

We looked at trees that might be good to climb and then we climbed! We squelched in the mud, a lot, some of us even lost our wellies in the muddy mess!
We explored nature, there were lots of plants to look at and one in particular we could smell. Wild garlic! It was everywhere, so we felt very hungry. We stopped for some snack before going to find more to explore.

Then we went to look at the horses in the field next door. They were munching on their grass so didn’t want to come and see us.

Before we knew it, it was time to go back to Cart Mill but we can’t wait to get out again next week.

Creativity, Froebel

Froebel Friends

March 11, 2024 Mrs Hannah Leave a comment

We were delighted to be part of East Renfrewshire’s Froebel Friends first exhibition at Netherlee Pavilion on Saturday, where we had the opportunity to showcase our children’s wonderful woodwork creations.

Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) was the inventor of kindergartens and a pioneer of early education and care. Froebel’s work and writing changed the way we think about and value early childhood. His principles of unity and connectedness, autonomous learners, value of childhood in its own right, relationships matter, creativity and the power of symbols, the central importance of play, engaging with nature and knowledgeable and nurturing educators were considered revolutionary in the 1850’s (Froebel Trust, 2021). At Cart Mill we firmly believe Froebel’s principles continue to be so relevant and we strive to adopt them into our everyday practice.

Our Cart Mill children just love our tinker table where they have the freedom to “learn through doing”. It is truly magical to observe our children exploring their creativity by creating their own unique and marvellous models using a wide range of natural and manufactured materials. Simply giving children freedom to spend time discussing, planning, designing and investigating resulted in this amazing box bursting in creativity, with each model having its own unique story.

”Woodwork is active learning at its best” (Bruce 2004:109). It is such a rich learning experience to explore creative and critical thinking skills through problem solving , trying new ideas and building on previous learning experiences. Our children have formed unity and connectedness by exploring where wood comes from and experimenting with its different natural forms of wood, shavings, sawdust, sticks, cardboard and even recycling from home!

It was an amazing opportunity to meet like minded Froebelian friends and form new connections and relationships. We had such a lovely day and were so proud to share our children’s work and experiences with our Froebelian colleagues.

Please feel free to speak to our Froebelian experts Ana, Fiona H and Emma if you would like any further information or pop in anytime to see how we put Froebelian principles into practice. We are so excited to see where our Froebelian journey takes us next!

Article 13 – you have the right to find out new things and share what you have learned with others.