Category Archives: Health and Wellbeing

Pancake 🥞 Day

Today is pancake day and the children were very excited to make pancakes for snack. We had a look at our recipe and gathered together our ingredients. The children had a look at the numbers on the scales and jug to make sure we measured the correct quantities.  We then added everything together and used the whisk to blend it into a smooth, runny consistency ready for cooking.

We had some fun tossing our pancakes in the air and catching them in our pan.  This helped develop their hand and eye coordination skills and also  their balance.  We also enjoyed our Bookbug session with stories and a few renditions of “pop a little pancake into the pan”.

At snack time the children chose what they would like to have on their pancakes. We had bananas, strawberries, raspberries or lemon juice.  “This was a great snack”. There was lots off discussion amongst the children about who had pancakes for breakfast today . This social time helps the children with language and taking turns during the conversation. “Hope my mummy makes pancakes tonight “ .

The children asked if they could make more pancakes in the afternoon. It had been such a long time since we had cooked pancakes on the fire we asked Val and Fiona if they would light the fire. It was a big yes so we spent the afternoon in the sun, around the fire pit having… MORE PANCAKES!

The children watched as the pancakes turned from a liquid into a solid and commented on the bubbles!

‘We can see bubbles! That means they’re ready to turn!’

Walks with Blue

Blue came in for a visit today, we were so pleased to see her.  She was eager to go for a walk and the children were keen to walk her! We looked out of the window to check the weather and decided it would be best to wear our wellies and puddle suits.

We all headed off down a muddy hill. We had to practice patience,  turn taking and being responsible when holding on to Blues lead.

We had great fun splashing through lots of puddles before going through the kissing gate one at a time.

It was so cold this morning that one of the puddles had a thin covering of ice which was fun to break and cold to touch.
“it’s like the North Pole “

the children noticed the sound of the “noisy” river “ it’s because there is much water”.

As we walked on, we noticed mounds of soil. After close inspection it was decided that they were mole hills. “Look this one looks like a baby one, it’s so cute”.

Walking Blue is so much fun, but splashing though puddles is the best!

Kung Hey Fat Choi

Today at Cart Mil we have been celebrating Lunar New Year 2022 by participating in various activities both indoors and outdoors! 2022 is the year of the tiger. We discussed the features of a tiger then decided to look for stripes while out for a walk. Look at all the stripes we found….

We also enjoyed having a race through the woods and a play in the spider park on the way back to nursery.

For snack today we sampled different foods that might be eaten during Lunar New Year celebrations.

We enjoyed tasting noodles, rice and lychees!

In the Home room we decided to make our own fortune cookies which were delicious!

We decided to make our playdough the same colours as a tiger and had lots of fun creating our own Lunar New Year tigers!

In the Discovery room we used our interactive board to research  the history of Lunar New Year.

We used our creativity and imagination in the Studio today to make celebration ribbons and streamers. We then used them to recreate our own Lunar New Year celebration dance.

We have had so much fun celebrating and learning the history of Lunar New Year.

Kung Hey Fat Choi!

 

 

Exercise Exercise Exercise!

Today, the children have been very keen to get their bodies moving! We discussed different ways we can exercise and why it is important to exercise.

” We need to keep healthy”

“ fruit makes me healthy too “

” I had vegetables with my lunch today “

We started off with a nice warm up in the garden and discussed the importance of this!


“We might hurt our legs if we don’t warm up”

” We won’t be able to exercise right “

After our warm up we made our own obstacle course to try out!!

“ Look how high I can jump “

” I’m being careful so I don’t get hurt “

We even had a cycle on the bikes!

“ my legs are getting exercise! “

And finally to cool down, we tried out some yoga!

 

Yummy Blueberry Muffins

This week the toddlers have been extremely busy. After enjoying home grown vegetables for snack this week, they decided to make some yummy blueberry muffins to enjoy for snack.

We all washed our hands and found a recipe book to let us know what ingredients we needed.

This is what we needed:

Plain Flour
Caster Sugar
Baking Powder
Salt
Melted Butter
Buttermilk
Lemon Rind
2 Eggs
Blueberries

We put all of the dry ingredients into a bowl, flour, sugar, baking powder, lemon rind and salt and gave it a stir.

Now we had to mix the wet ingredients, buttermilk, eggs and melted butter.

And gave it a good stir.

We carefully added the wet ingredients to the flour mix and gave it a good mix. It became very gloopy!

Pop in some blueberries.

The children took great care filling the muffin cases before putting them in the oven to cook.
The muffins looked delicious when they were cooked. The children had to wait till they had cooled before enjoying them for snack.

Some of the children wanted to taste some of the blueberries…. even the lemon!

What will we make next time?

From earth to table snack today!!!🥕🥕🥕


The toddlers have been growing vegetables in our garden. We have been watering  them regularly and today we were able to harvest them! We enjoyed some delicious toddler grown snacks including carrots and  spring onion,  with a potato to take home for later.

We firstly picked our carrots, spring onions and potatoes.

Then we washed the soil off.

Finally after working so hard today, we enjoyed tasting our Cart Mill grown vegetables at snack time.

The children have been learning where our food comes from and it was nice to be able to learn and share together. 😀

 

 

Flapjack fun!

Today the children in the toddlers had so much fun making yummy, sticky flapjacks! We did lots of measuring, weighing, melting, greasing and mixing to make the perfect consistency. This morning it turned out a little bit dry, so we put our thinking caps on… how do we make it stickier? The answer of course, was more sticky syrup!! We added some extra tablespoons of syrup to see if it would change the texture as it  was “too crumbly” and “crunchy”the first time, and it turned out just right. Well done guys! See if you can spot the difference.

We can’t wait to see what the children decide to make next from their book of baking ideas. Stay tuned!!

 

Fruit skewers anyone…..

In the toddlers today we decided to make fruit skewers today. We were able to focus on colours, patterns, taste, numeracy as well as developing our fine motor skills.


Firstly, we washed our fruit

We picked from a selection of strawberries, apples, grapes and bananas

We used our fingers to carefully thread the fruit onto our skewers creating patterns


It can be quite tricky but we all persevered


The fruit is very tasty

Happy children enjoying their snack 😁

Merry Christmas to all

There were some very excited children in the centre today. As it was cold and frosty we thought it would be a good idea to light the fire and sing some Christmas songs around it, while drinking delicious hot chocolate.
We hope all the Cart Mill family have a wonderful and safe festive period.
Merry Christmas, and a very happy New Year from us all.
Thank you to all for the most generous gifts you have handed in for the staff, it is very much appreciated.