Category Archives: Snack

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 .

Learning some Makaton at snack time

For learning languages week we have been learning some Makaton at the snack table.

Some of the children recognised Mr Tumble. We discussed that Mr Tumble uses Makaton to communicate. This means he is using his hand to talk. We as discovered that some adults and children might use makaton if they have a hearing loss of if they find it difficult to talk.

We looked at the signs and Fiona help demonstrate them.

The children enjoyed putting it into practice.

Here are some of the signs we have been learning at snack time.

“Hello”

“Eat”

“Drink”

“More”

“Thank you”

 

Burns day at Cart Mill

Happy Burns Day!

Today at Cart Mill we have been celebrating all things Scottish…

We have been making Scotland flags in the playdough area with Emma using blue and white playdough…

We have had so much fun helping Fiona to make Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, we helped to peel the potatoes 🥔 and then we got to taste it at snack time!

We also had a try at some Scottish dancing today in the discovery room… We listened to Scottish ceilidh music and practiced some traditional dance moves with the help of Gails expertise!

In the studio, we have used different coloured ribbons to create our own tartan pictures. The children were able to select their own colours and create their own patterns inspired by pictures of various tartan…

As you can see the children have had so much fun exploring a variety of experiences throughout the day at nursery! We have had a fabulous burns day  🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

 

Berrylicious Muffins😁

Today the children have been talking about the different  berries they know -the different delicious tastes they have , different shapes they have and different ones they have seen when they have been on walks or maybe out shopping.


We thought about how we can use berries in our baking so we decided to make some mixed berry muffins. Together we looked at the recipe and we then followed the instructions to make our muffins.

“We can use blackberries , strawberries and raspberries”


”I think raspberries will make them taste nice”

“ It  looks gooey and sticky”
We carefully took turns when measuring out the ingredients. We counted and  we showed we could problem solve  when we realised their muffin mixture wasn’t binding well. We had to add more coconut milk to make the mixture a bit more sticky.

Once our mixture was ready we spooned it into our cake cases. It was now ready for the oven! ,First we set the timer for ten minutes to check to see if they were cooking well.  After waiting patiently our muffins were soon ready!😋

When out the oven and being left to cool down the children noticed the colour of their muffins had changed.

“They look weird”   “ That’s funny they look different”  “ They smell so yummy”
They then realised that they had changed because of colour of the berries.
Baking is a great experience for developing hand eye coordination through mixing and spooning. Everybody felt a great sense of achievement from baking their own yummy muffins and were excited to taste them at snack time.
What yummy tasty treats can you make using different types of berries?

☀️Sun days are fun days !☀️

With our summer term  ending and many of our children getting ready to finish their time with us to move on to school….

What better way to enjoy our last days of nursery and the most likely (but hopefully not) the glorious  sunshine, was to spend today having a fun day having some slippy sunny day sliding on our big water slide!
Using our soapy liquid and our running water hose  we had lots of exciting fun and laughs sliding down our hilly slope.

As you can tell it wasn’t just the children who had all the fun! 😀

We used our bodies in different ways to find the most fun and fastest ways to go down!

The most difficult part was the climb back up the hill to the top; it was well worth it though for those few moments we had laughing all the way down!
Once we were all dried off and changed into dry clothing we cooled off and enjoyed a relaxing snack with an icy treat! 😎

Sunny days are the best!

🍦🍧😎 Cool Fridays 😎🍧🍦

🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️

After a long hot week we cooled off today with some tasty treats!

We talked together about different ways we cooled ourselves down when the weather was really warm and made us feel really hot!
There were so many great ideas!

“I play water fights”

“I drink lots of water”

“I use sun cream and I wear a hat”

“I eat ice cream and ice poles”

”My favourite is to eat ice lollies”

We all agreed that one of the best ways to cool down was to eat ice cream or ice lollies! This gave us an idea… to make our own ice cream shop where we could sell all sorts of ice creams, ice lollies, milk shakes and ice poles.

We used a selection of craft materials to make our icy treats and our ice cream shop.

We then each took turns to be the shop keeper or be the customer.
Which cool treat would be your favourite?
”I like a strawberry cone and sauce”

”mmmmm mint choc chip is the best”

“I like to lick the ice lollies”

To finish our day we made it real – we had some icy treats at snack time! What a great way to end our hot and busy week, before the rain came! 😎

Hopefully Mr Sun will be back soon! 🌞

🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️🌞☀️

Let’s go for a walk ……..

Today we decided to go for a walk.  Let’s go across the road (watch out for  the cars and bikes). Along the stoney path , through the woods and then the gate , remember to close the gate so any animals can’t get out ! . What can we hear “water we must be near the river..

We have spotted lots of nature on the way we have seen a ladybird on a leaf 🍃 and lots of different types of flowers 🌸 watch out for the jaggy ones!

We even saw some raspberries growing on a bush. Look at those dark clouds “they might be full of rain”.

Then we found the river . It’s time for a little snack of Juicy apples 🍏 . We then took it in turn to go carefully down to the river and get to throw our stones in. Each stone makes a different sound wow mine went plop !

On our way back to nursery we went on a stick hunt we wanted to collect sticks, pine cones, flowers and long pieces of grass some were even taller than us !!. We can put them in our nursery garden and let all the children see what we have found.

We all agreed we had a lovely walk in the outdoors . We explored, worked together ,listened to each other learned lots of new information and also had great fun.