Category Archives: Literacy

Baking, Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, music, nature, Outdoor Learning, Snack, Social Studies

What have we been doing at Cart Mill this week?

July 5, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

This week at Cart Mill we have been taking part in a wide variety of learning experiences across each of our playrooms and our garden.
In our Discovery room we have continued along our Jack and the Beanstalk learning journey by investigating “forces” and “travel”. Our mission was to find a way for Jack to get to and from the castle without the giant seeing! To do this we decided to fill the balloon with air and let it go to see how far it would travel towards the castle. It’s been so much fun seeing how much air we need to make the balloon go fast or slow.

In our Studio we have shown an interest in diggers and have been using the water tray as our construction site. We used dried rice to represent the dirt and had great fun using the construction toys to fill, empty and transport the rice. We used our technology skills to look at videos of real construction vehicles on our smart board. This experience had such a great level of engagement from all our children, especially our younger ones. We even found a Danny go video called “digging in the dirt” to all join in with, incorporating our health, well-being and movements skills.

In our Home room we have continued to develop our baking skills by researching recipes, measuring ingredients and making yummy vegan treats for our afternoon snack! The best part was taste testing our baking!
In our playdough area we have been experimenting by adding different scents to our playdough. We’ve tried peppermint, lemon and orange extracts. We even tried chocolate powder to make chocolate playdough. It smelt so good and looked just like chocolate. This week we decided to wander out to the the planting area to choose herbs and flowers to introduce some different scents. We picked basil, thyme, garlic and some flowers. As we grow in confidence, we are able to make our playdough independently using our self serve playdough station. It has been lots of fun choosing loose parts to add to our playdough and creating wonderful models.
Between the smells of playdough and daily home baking our home room smells delightful.

And finally our garden! The weather has been a little varied this week with showers of rain in between the sunshine. As usual, we didn’t let that stop our fun! We have used the gross motor rollers to mark make, played role play games using the play house and even took part in music and movement games such as head shoulders knees and toes. We extended our muddy movers skills by playing catch with the sticky ball and catching mitts. It was lots of fun taking turns with catching and throwing.

We all love learning through our play at Cart Mill! I wonder what we will do next week during our summer adventures?

UNCRC article 28- we have the right to play.

Creativity, Literacy

Billy’s Bucket

June 21, 2024 Mrs Johnston Leave a comment

Today we enjoyed the book Billy’s Bucket, a story about a boy who wanted a bucket for his birthday! Using his wonderful imagination, he described all the exciting events that happened and the sea creatures that came to visit. After reading our story we decided to design our own buckets…

Then we thought about all the creatures we wanted in our own buckets….sharks, whales, sea lions!!

We thought our bucket was too little so we made an even bigger one in our water tray. After lots of discussion, problem solving and decision making, we decided to make our water red!

Reading a story has helped us develop our literacy skills, fuels our imagination and creativity and allows us to share ideas with our friends. We have demonstrated we can make decisions, problem solve, work together and lead our own learning. 😁

Article 28 You have the right to an education

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Number Stones

June 12, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Over the past week we have been developing a range of skills at our play area. From counting to recognising numbers, shapes and patterns, Gross motor skills and writing stories we have experienced it all. The children have been so creative.

I observed the children playing a game at the clay table, they were drawing pictures in the clay with different clay tools and asking their friends to guess what they had made. One child wrote the number 4 in clay.

“Guess what I’m drawing it has a shell on it” – A snail

“I draw happy face”

“I did number 4, cause I’m 4”

This lead us on to writing numbers in the clay, we made number stones and decided to paint them lots of different colours. When the paint was dry we brushed over them with Pva glue and left them to dry. Finally using a black marker to make numbers stand out.

The children have used these number stones to lead their own learning. We have used our counting skills and number recognition to rearrange the numbers in order from 1-10.
They have played lots of different games with the number stones, one game involves the children laying the numbers out in order and closing their eyes 👀 I take one number stone away and they have to guess what number is missing. To make it more challenging we mixed the numbers up and before removing one.

“It’s number 4” Next we added in numbers 10-20 to add fun challenge to their learning.

“I’m doing it upside down and the wrong way round 😂”

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Sequencing stories

June 12, 2024 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

The children have been enjoying telling their own stories using the puppets which sparked us to learn more about how a story is structured. We have learned that a story needs a start, where we choose a setting and meet the characters, a middle, where we develop the story and an ending.

We have used familiar stories, such as The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff to help us understand how to sequence a story.

We have also been creating our own books using an online tool called book creator. Here is Erin’s version of The Billy Goats Gruff.

Some of the children even felt confident enough to create their own stories. Grace used the story prompt cards to choose a main character and a setting then created a wonderful story!

Some of the younger children have enjoyed using the pictures in the books as prompts and demonstrated great confidence when sharing a story within a group. We even have some budding illustrators among our two year olds.

UNCRC article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Literacy, Snack

What’s cooking in the Cart Mill Kitchen

May 31, 2024 Mr Edwards Leave a comment

This week in the snack area, we’ve been exploring foods from around the world, sparked by the children noticing that the fruit we eat comes from different countries. Our focus this week was on making pitta bread and hummus, a delicious snack enjoyed in many Middle Eastern countries. We looked online to find a recipe we could follow. Let’s find out how we made them. 😃

Step 1: Making the Pitta Bread

First, we used scales to measure the ingredients, Weighing out 350g of gluten-free flour, we added it to a bowl. Next we used a jug to measure out 300ml of natural yogurt, adding it to the bowl along with a pinch of salt and 2 tsp of baking powder. We mixed them all together with a wooden spoon to create a simple dough.

We then used a rolling pin to roll out the dough into small circles, ready to cook. Doing this helped develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Once cooked, the pitta breads were ready to taste at snack time.

Step 2: Making the Hummus

We combined chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, and tahini in a blender, taking turns to measure out the quantities needed.

Next we turned on the blender mixing them until we achieved a smooth paste. At first we noticed that the consistency was a little thick. Using our problem solving skills one the children suggested adding water. We added a little water at a time till it was perfect to try with our freshly baked pitta breads. The process expanded the children’s vocabulary and helped them follow multi-step instructions.

Take a look at some of the fabulous comments bellow.

“It’s mixing together”

“It’s evolving”

“I think it will be smooth”

“It’s mixing really fast”

The children enjoyed both the process and the delicious results, learning about foods from around the world and exploring new cooking techniques.

I wonder what we could make next week? If you have any suggestions please leave them in the comment box below. 😃

Article 1
Everyone under 18 has all these rights

Article 28
You have the right to education.

life cycles, Literacy, nature

Cart Mill Caterpillar Centre 🐛🦋

May 20, 2024 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

Each year at Cart Mill we like to learn about the lifecycle of butterflies and what better way than a hands on experience. We ordered caterpillars and they arrived on the 10th of May, we have been recording their growth each day since. They can grow up to ten times their size before forming a chrysalis. Look at how they changed each day..

This morning we arrived at nursery to discover many of the caterpillars had formed their chrysalides over the weekend. One of them was forming theirs at the exact moment we checked on them, it was amazing to watch! So we thought we best start learning about the next stages of the lifecycle. We looked through the information handbook and we also read the story of The Hungry Caterpillar.

“A butterfly.”

“Butterflies come from caterpillars.”

We also watched the short video of The Hungry Caterpillar as a treat. Afterwards, I asked the children what they could tell me about caterpillars and butterflies..

”They live on trees and eat leaves.”

”They make a raccoon.”

”He turns green.”

”Butterflies need to flap their wings.”

The metamorphosis process takes 7-10 days so we could see some butterflies before the holiday weekend 🤞🦋

UNCRC Article 28- every child has the right to an education.

UNCRC Article 29- education must encourage the child’s respect for the environment.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, Literacy

Pikachu clay models

May 13, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

The children wanted to make something different with the clay, but they were unsure of what. So last week we sat down together and discussed some ideas, I asked the children questions to get them to really think about their interests and how we could incorporate these in to our clay area.

Pokémon seemed to be a common theme so we used the iPad to search the internet for some Pokémon ideas. We came across a clay Pokémon figure, it was perfect! The children helped pick out some other clay model pictures including unicorns, garden gnomes, and even Elsa from Frozen . I printed these out and laminated them, leaving them on the table to inspire some ideas.

The children began to make their own models, squeezing, rolling, and manipulating the clay to their desired shape. They soon realised looking at the pictures that our clay was grey and the pictures used coloured clay, how would they make their own models colourful? They worked together using their problem solving skills to come up with some ideas. “I know, we could get paint!” “and paintbrushes and paint them and that’s how they will be colours”.

Once their models were finished we left them to dry out over the weekend, ready for painting this morning.

There was lots of great ideas.

“A bowl of soup with spoon”

“Pikachu”

“I made a snail”

They put their finished models on the shelf to let the paint dry, we can’t wait to see the end result.

Literacy, Makaton

Dear Zoo with makaton

May 9, 2024 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

The story of Dear Zoo is an absolutely favourite within Cart Mill. The younger children in particular enjoy this story. To add more challenge for the older children, today we learned the Makaton signs for all the animals while reading the story.

The boys and girls were great at copying the signs! The monkey and the lion were definitely the favourites!

Due to the simple language and repetition, children of all age and stage can join in and it gives them the confidence to be the ‘reader’ too. Many children with minimal language due to their age or having English as an additional language will know the names of animals and/or can join in with the repeating line of ‘I sent him back.’ This is great for developing their social skills and allowing them to be part of a group.

We read the story three times altogether then one of the girls asked if she could read it to her friends. The other children happily joined in with the actions and putting the animal puppets back in the zoo.

The boys and girls then took turns of reading the book and continued to play with the puppets to create their own stories.

If you would like to learn how to read Dear Zoo using makaton you can follow this link and join in with Singing Hands.

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.