Category Archives: Snack

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

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 😋

 

Summer fun🎈Afternoon Tea at Cart Mill 🍓


The children led this blog and narrated as they went – enjoy their own words!
On a nature walk the children noticed that the bushes across from the nursery have raspberries on them.  “ Can we pick some and make something with them” “ I love raspberries “ “ The strawberries in the garden are ready to we could make some jam and put it onto scones “

“These strawberries aren’t very big” “ Bet they still taste good though” “We need to wash our strawberries and raspberries “

” We need to mash the fruit up, I think a fork would be best for mashing “ “ The strawberries and raspberries smell really good” “ I’m going to mash up 5 strawberries and 3 raspberries because I like strawberries the best”


“ Lets carefully measure out the ingredients so our scones are tasty” “Don’t put to much baking powder in or it will taste horrible, I think half a teaspoon is fine “

is
“let’s cut our scones out,we need the special scone cutter and we need to use the rolling pin , to make it flat”” mine is a bit sticky” 

”I think 11 minutes will be enough “ ” I don’t want mine to burn”

” Mmmm my scone tastes yummy “ “ I’m only putting a little jam on mine”  “ we better wash our dishes”

Great team work the scones tasted amazing and you even washed the dishes. 🤩

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rhyme Time

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.

Growing our apple and orange seeds today 🤔


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

 

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

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

Independence at snack 🍊 🍌 🥒

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 👏

 

Fragrant Fruits

The children have continued to use their favourite fruits chart and have been taking turns asking their friends what fruit tastes the best.

We had a discussion about what our five senses are and what body part you use for each one.

Taste “- your mouth”, tongue”, “ I lick my lips and taste”
Touch –  “with your hands”
Smell – “My nose”
See – “eyes”
Hear –  “Ears”

We decided we could use another one of our senses to gather information using our chart. The children chose their sense of smell to try and guess what fruit was in the cup.
We prepared the fruit and put them in our paper cups and covered it with a paper towel sealed on with an elastic band.

Everyone gathered their cups and charts and went to ask their friends to smell the fruit and say what their favourite smell and what they thought it was, before making a mark on the chart to record their answer. The children all had different favourites but were very good at identifying the correct fruit just from its smell.

We then all came back to the table and counted up all the marks we had gathered to see which one was the most popular.

“Apple has 9 it is the favourite”

” Orange has the most on my chart”

“ watermelon had none but I like watermelon”

We discussed our favourite smells before making a plan to use a different sense for our next fruit identification, what sense do you think we chose?

Our Favourite Fruits

Today we were having a discussion about our favourite fruits. We decided to go and see what fruits we have in nursery and took pictures of the various fruits we could find.

We wanted to find out everyone’s favourite fruit  so we decided the best way was to create a chart of “our favourite fruits”. We cut out our pictures and glued them on paper and made squiggly lines to separate the fruits. We laminated these so we can use them everyday.

We then went round our playrooms asking our friends what their favourite fruits are.  We put a tick next to the fruit they chose.

“It’s yummy”

“Watermelon tastes the best”

The children then counted how many ticks at each fruit to see which was the most popular.

“The  watermelon Is most popular.” “ it has 10”

“The  pepper only has one “

We decided to have the four different fruits for our snack today so .we washed our hands and gathered our chopping boards & knives and began preparing the fruits . We talked about the different sizes of fruit  and the best way to cut them.

“ Watermelon is the hardest”

“Bananas are easy”

Finally it was snack time and it looked delicious!

We decided next time we could find out what our favourite smells are.
Continue reading Our Favourite Fruits

From farms to our tables 🥕🥔

This week we set up our farm in the small world area. The children brushed the floor and made it all clean and tidy to start. They added artificial grass and blocks round it to make the fence so the animals couldn’t escape onto the road. We added some wooden people to act as the farmer and the families who live and work on the farm.

Then the animals came out to play.

We had a chat about what we already know about farms.

“What do you know about farms?”

“They have animals like cows and sheep, that eat grass”

“My horse eats carrots”

“Farms have vegetables”

“My daddy  bought carrots from the shop I had them for dinner”

We explored the different vegetables, feeling and smelling them and peeled and chopped them.

“Big potato, small potato”

I asked the children if they knew how the vegetables get from the farm to the shop.

They seemed unsure so we watched a video called farm to fork.

After we watched the process of growing vegetables on the farm, then being transported to the shops before getting to our tables. The children used the vegetables they had peeled and chopped and “planted” them in the soil. They are very keen to grow their own vegetables in the garden when the weather is a little warmer so we can use them for snack.

The children used the carrots, celery, and cabbage to chop up for a lovely snack, they also added melon, blueberries and orange.


“snack is very yummy today”

Fun Fruits

Today we have been looking at different fruits. At snack time we have discovered how juicy some of our fruits can be. We chose the fruits we thought would be the juiciest; strawberries, lemons, limes and oranges.


We then cut our fruit in half this gives us two pieces . The orange was a bit difficult to cut and we had to use the knife in a sawing motion. “ Look I did it “

The next job was to use all our muscles and push the fruit onto the squeezer and when we twisted it round and round the juice started to fall into the container. We enjoyed watching all the colours drip into our glasses . “ I like the red one “ “ orange is my favourite “ .

We discovered that some of the bigger fruits produced more liquid than the smaller ones. The children were able to look at the glasses we had filled and put them in order. “ The strawberry one is the littlest “ and the “orange is the biggest”

After all the juice was squeezed we practiced our pouring skills and filled our own glasses with juice so that we could enjoy some tasting.

We did have some funny faces when we tried the lemon and lime but the juices were all finished and enjoyed. We will look forward to some more exciting times with our fun fruits .