Category Archives: Snack

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

Happy Halloween 🎃

October 31, 2023 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

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. 👻🎃👻🎃

Digital Technology, Literacy, Snack

Berry nice smoothies 🍓🫐

October 19, 2023 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Today in the home room the children decided they wanted to make fruit smoothies.

We used the internet to search for a recipe to make delicious fruit smoothies. We then collected the ingredients we needed from the kitchen to begin making our very nice smoothies.

To begin the children took turns to scoop a spoonful of frozen berries into the bowl. Next they safely used a knife to cut up a banana to add to the bowl.

“I put strawberries and blueberries in they were stuck together with ice”

Using the measuring jug the children measured out 240ml of milk, they worked as a team to measure one tsp of honey before adding all the ingredients into the blender. We also made a water based fruit smoothie as an alternative.

“it’s so noisy”

When the ingredients were all blended together the children poured the smoothie into an jug and shared with their friends for snack.

“It tastes yummy”

“ I can taste banana, I like banana for snack”

Snack

Setting into life at Cart Mill

August 25, 2023 Mrs Hannah Leave a comment

As we come to the end of the first week of our new term, we thought we would share our fun filled week with you! It has been lovely to welcome our new children and families and see our children returning from holiday. We are so proud of how well you have settled and become part of our Cart Mill family. Of course we can’t forget our experienced Cart Millers who have taken great pride in being tour guides, sharing their experience and lending a helping hand.

Our Cart Mill Cafe has been a highlight this week! We are super proud of our children who have taken our lunch and snack routine in their stride. They have demonstrated fabulous independence by helping prepare snack, serving themselves, clearing away their dishes afterwards, having the confidence to try new foods and share their likes and dislikes with us.

A new beginning and change of routine can be exciting but also a little daunting and overwhelming at times! This week we’ve taken the time to focus on our health and well-being by thinking about fun activities we would like to do to “make us feel happy” and take time to make connections with our new environment and each other. It has been lovely to observe new friendships forming and established friendships reigniting.

A firm favourite has been to spend time outdoors where we have had lots of fun creating our own “running and hopping” game and exploring sensory play in our mud kitchen and water area.

“Look the bubbles are blue. I’m pouring the water”.

”Look you go this way. I’ll help you”.

Singing and dancing is always good for the soul, uplifting spirits and bringing us together. There have been plenty choruses of rain, rain go away come again another day this week! In usual Cart Mill style this didn’t dampen our spirits but instigated some fabulous outfits, dance moves and dance shows!

“”I’ve got my sun hat and my cat ears on”

We have taken time to ensure we have created some lovely cozy corners where we can relax, share our favourite stories and chat with our friends and shared precious mindful moments during group time.

Our noisy/quiet room has been very popular. We embraced the opportunity to unwind by sewing and creating our own fabulous songs on our piano, as well as spending some time in our studio listening to relaxing music and painting our masterpieces!

It’s been a wonderful week full of cuddles, fun, stories, songs and laughter. We can’t wait to share the next chapter of our journey with you!

You have the right to give your opinion, and for an adult to listen and take it seriously. (Right 12)

You have the right to rest and play. (Right 31)

Snack

It’s a strawberry muffin kinda day at Cart Mill 🍓😁

August 23, 2023 Miss Mitchell Leave a comment

The Children decided today that they would like to bake strawberry muffins.

They were able to follow my instructions to make their yummy muffins. “ 1,2,3 I have put my three scoops of flour in” “ flour is quite messy it goes everywhere “

” The strawberry (dairy free) yogurt smells lovely, It’s my favourite “ “ Im putting in 4 tablespoons so it’s extra strawberryish”

The children looked to see what other ingredients they could add to their muffins and found some cherries in the fridge. “These cherries will make our muffins extra tasty “ They used their fantastic hand eye coordination and fine motor skills to slice them up. “Im slicing mine in half”

They helped each other to spoon the mixture into cases. “ We made 12 muffins” “ I think we could share our strawberry muffins at snack

““

Good job everyone they were super tasty 😋

Literacy, Snack

Rhyme Time

July 21, 2023 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

The children have recently been enjoying reading rhyming stories and singing nursery rhymes during Bookbug so we have added some more rhyming resources to the story corner.

Our younger children are learning new nursery rhymes and playing instruments while singing along and our pre-school children are starting to learn to distinguish sounds. Nursery rhymes are a great way to learn early phonic skills and build a child’s vocabulary.

Today we have played rhyming pairs and the children were great at taking turns, helping each other to find the cards and even suggesting other words that rhyme.

We also played a game of rhyming partners where the children walk around the room with their picture card and find a friend that has the rhyming card.
We continued to rhyme while having snack, making up words that rhyme with what we were eating;

cucumber- boocumber

apple- snapple

melon- Ellon

After snack Gail decided to host a Bookbug session in the garden. Twinkle, twinkle chocolate bar definitely being the favourite song!

Please remember to check the annual calendar for dates you can attend Bookbug sessions at nursery with your child.

UNCRC Article 15- You have the right to be with friends.

Outdoor Learning, Snack

Growing our apple and orange seeds today 🤔

July 12, 2023 Mrs Johnston Leave a comment

Today we decided to reuse our seeds from snack to see if we could grow our own fruit……how do we do this?
First of all we had to wet some paper towel then…

We put the seeds on the towel with plenty of wriggle room…..

We added a little cinnamon to help prevent our seeds rotting

Then we added another wet piece of paper towel put them in a zip locked bag and put them in the fridge

We’ll need to keep the seeds damp and wait to see what will happen……🤔

We also tried to grow some orange pips…

We soaked the orange pips for 30mins

We placed them between 2 pieces of cotton wool with a little cinnamon, put them in an air tight bag but this time……

We found a nice warm space in the kitchen above the oven, again we’ll need to make sure the pips are damp and let’s check on them in a couple of days to see if anything has happened……?🤔

Article 28 You have the right to education

Outdoor Learning, Snack

🔍🔍🔍 What can we spy in the garden today???

July 3, 2023 Mrs Johnston Leave a comment

Today we went into the garden with torches and magnifying glasses to see what we could find 🤔

We searched down at the bottom of the garden…..I wonder what we might find???

We found a pea plant and Isla told us “the bigger the pod the bigger the pea, the smaller the pod the smaller the pea!”

We collected them all in a bowl.

We shelled our peas comparing the different sizes of the peas

We were very pleased with the amount of peas we found 😀

We had to be very careful and check if any of our children were allergic to green peas

Article 13 You have the right to find out things

Snack

Independence at snack 🍊 🍌 🥒

April 6, 2023 Ms Partridge Leave a comment

This week the children have been developing their independence skills in the home room, which they demonstrate well while preparing snack for their peers. The children show a good understanding of how we can be safe as we prepare snack in many ways. For example, what should we do before we even begin preparing snack, and why is it important?

“we have to wash our hands 🙌 “

“We have to wash them so we don’t get sticky germs on the fruit”

The children suggested we make some wall displays to show their friends where to wash their hands, since we have some new children who are still learning the snack routine.

“Nice and bright so everybody can see it! Now all the little boys and girls will wash their hands here”

Whilst preparing the snack, we talked about how important safety is when handling the snack tools.

“You go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards nice and carefully. You don’t want to cut yourself”

“You only do it when an adult helps you”

“Sometimes I need help with the cucumber because it’s a little bit too tricky”

Next we talked about how we can continue to practice good hygiene when serving the snack…

“The tweezers stops the germs 🦠”

“Squeeze!”

Once the children have finished their snack, it’s time to finish up by clearing away all our dishes 🥣🥛

They even suggested designing a separate sign for the dishes, to visualise where everything goes.

The children in the nursery are great at independently following the snack routine, and have been super helpful towards their new peers who are still learning and working as a team to support them.

Well done everybody! Great work 👏