Category Archives: Literacy

Literacy

Jack and the Beanstalk

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Today in the noisy and quiet room the children were keen to act out the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

First, we decided to read the story to familiarise ourselves with it.

 

The children enjoyed re-telling their favourite parts in the story.

”Fee-fi -foo-fum! Jack Pott, what have you done?

“Fee – fi -Foo – fum,  I smell the blood of a Englishman. Be he alive, or be he dead, I’ll use his bones to grind my bread.”

The children each chose a character to play in the story and we used the props to help us re- tell the story.

 


“ want to be Jack so I can climb up the Beanstalk”

“ I am the goose that lays the golden eggs, Jack you have to rescue me from the giant”

“ I am Jack’s mummy and I am going to throw the magic beans out the window “

 

 

“Quick chop the beanstalk, the giant is after me”

The children had so much fun acting and developing their language skills by expressing various characters dialogue in the story.

They also developed  their social skills by expressing their characters feelings and showing respect through turn taking, co-operating and sharing with each other.

Why not give it a try at home and re-tell your favourite story’s or make one up. Have fun! 😊

 

 

 

 

 

Literacy, Trips and Outings

Visiting the library

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We enjoyed a lovely visit to Busby library this morning. While walking to the library, we discussed what type of stories we like and which books we might choose.
Once we arrived we chose a book each and settled down to read them. We discussed what we thought the story might be about by looking at the covers then started to explore the books.

We enjoyed reading a story called There’s a Shark in my Bath altogether. I asked the children what they would do if they found a shark in their bath and they responded
“I would run away.”
“I would give him into trouble.”
“I would put him on the naughty step because he’s not allowed in my bath.”

Then Peter from the library also read us a lovely story about a Penguin.

We even got to dance like a penguin 🐧

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Loose Parts Play

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This week in the Discovery room we have had lots of fun exploring loose parts.

We have collected lots of different items to create our loose part trays. Using our excellent fine motor skills, we sorted our loose parts into groups of similar items.

Filling and emptying lots of different sized containers using tweezers and tongs helped us develop our fine motor skills, and develop our understanding of volume and measurement.

“This one has lots of big and small pieces”.

”It’s full. I’m emptying it out”.

It was lots of fun choosing which loose parts we would use to create our transient artwork. We have such wonderful imaginations!

“It’s a volcano with lava coming out”.

”I made a caterpillar with pom poms”.

”I made a maze. The board is the way in. That one is the way out”.

Some of us decided to choose our own loose parts to create the letters of our name.  We each drew our letter then carefully placed our loose parts along the lines.  Don’t they look fabulous!

To challenge ourselves further, we decided to make our names from our favourite loose parts.  We decided we like the pom poms, colourful matchsticks and gems the best!

There are so many fabulous things activities we can do with loose parts that help us develop a wide range of skills, our imaginations and creativity.
Loose parts can be anything from cardboard boxes, yoghurt pots, cotton reels and shells or sticks we can collect on holiday!
Why not have some fun with loose parts at home and see what you can create!

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Let us entertain you!

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We have had a busy day in our Studio. We have explored our creativity and imagination through art and storytelling.
Using a selection of junk and art materials we  were able to build our own puppet theatre.


We shared and discussed what our favourite fairy tale stories were and who our favourite characters from popular stories were. We then listened to some stories before creating our own puppets. Using our great craft and motor skills when glueing, sticking, cutting and drawing  we made our very own puppets all ready for the premier of our puppet show performances.


“ I’m making a fairy for my story”

” Sleeping beauty is my favourite so I’m making Aurora “

Once our audience settled, we began our performances! We sat very patiently and demonstrated good listening skills while we all had a turn of being the puppeteer. For some stories we needed some  help from a friend to puppeteer alongside us as it got a bit tricky trying to hold all the characters at once!
We used our loud speaking voices to introduce our characters and the name of our stories we would be re-enacting. Some of us were a little shy and nervous to begin but when it came to our turn our confidence shone and we were able to re-tell familiar and popular stories using our own words such as ‘The Three Bears’, ‘Goldilocks’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Some of us were able to make our own stories up using our puppets we created.

Well done boys and girls you have been great entertainers! We all enjoyed listening and watching your stories and had so much fun with our puppet theatre, why not give this a go at home? You could make up your own puppets and stories!

Literacy

Spider Puppets

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The children have shown an interest in spiders and today in the noisy and quiet room we decided to create our own spider puppets. We did this in the small world spider area that has been set up for the children to explore their spider interest further.

First, we had a read over one of our favourite spider books and discussed all the different types of spiders you can get . We found out  that the first spiders lived about 300 million years ago, even before dinosaurs roamed the earth. We found out spiders are not insects and most spiders are web weaver some, weave sheet, funnel shapes webs, triangle webs and  the Orb spider spins a beautiful pattern of many  different circles .

”That’s my favourite one  he’s called the Tarantula and he is very hairy “

”That goddess turned into a spider”

” This spider has got 10 legs “

we then set to work creating our own spider puppets, for this we used paper plates, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, glue, sellotape and some pencils.
we began by sticking our googly eyes onto our paper plates and by doing this first it allowed us to see where the holes for our spider’s legs should go.

“ I am going to put on eight legs on my spider “


“ my spider is a daddy one”

we used the tip of a pen to carefully poke holes for our fingers to go through to create the spider’s legs. Some of us wanted more legs for our spider so we decided to use pipe cleaner to create more .

look at our lovely spider’s!



The children enjoyed making their spider puppets whilst learning lots of facts about spiders  and developing their fine motor and language skills.
why not give it a try at home and make your own spider puppet and put on a puppets show! Let us know how you get on, have fun!🕷

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Mark making with the Cars

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Today the children were showing an interest in the different cars ,trucks and trains in the Discovery room.  We decided to collect some items to see if there were different to do with the cars.

We collected:

  • “A big, massive piece of paper”
  • Scissors
  • sticky tape
  • Pens

We taped the paper to the floor but the children also wanted to tape the pens to the cars to see what would happen to them.

” The train drawed a line and then a circle”

They realised when they moved the trains and cars on the paper, the pens were leaving a trail behind them.

The children noticed that by using different sized pens that the marks were different sizes.

“It looks like my dads map of Scotland, with all the lines on it”

Mark making is an important step in a child’s journey in learning to write. This allows them to practice holding a pencil and learning to control their marks. This improves their fine motor skills and helps to develop their hand- eye coordination.

Mark making can also encourage creativity by giving the opportunity to communicate through drawing and using their marks to tell a story.

” My truck is going to follow the track to find the other cars”

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Scribble while you wiggle.

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Today in the Studio Room we were scribbling while we wiggle. There is lots of activities we can do to help us on our journey to writing. The first step is ensuring  we have the gross and fine motor skills ready to hold our pencils.
We used material and scarfs and chose our song to wiggle to.

First we copied Emma’s actions moving the scarfs round and round, twisting and twirling. Then we listened to the rhythm of the music, and then we all used our own movements to control the scarfs.

Another activity we can scribble while you wiggle to is painting to music. We chose music from an orchestra and listened to the sound each instrument made and painted what we thought the sound would look like.


Was it a splash or bang, would the sound make us paint long strokes or short.

We used paint brushed but one of our children decided to use her hands to represent the sounds she heard.

Another scribble while you wiggle activity our children enjoy is using large paper and a wide range of mark making resources to mark make and use scribble streams. We chose the instrumental Encanto songs. This music was fast with an upbeat tempo and we used different movements with our pens/pencils to this music.

We enjoyed  working together and showing each other what we had created and what we each thought the music sounded like. We even used our turn taking and sharing skills. This is a great activity enjoyed by all our children from 2-5years old.

Why don’t you have a go at scribble while you wiggle at home? What do you think sound looks like?

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Animal themed songs 🐮🐔🐸🐻‍❄️

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Today the children were enjoying some songs with movement, puppets, rhymes help the children to join in and retain their interest. We all got to choose the songs we wanted to sing and used props if we could to make it even more fun.

Old Macdonald had a farm 🐷


Little bunnies see them sleeping, see them hopping 🐰

Incey wincey spider

The children were having a great time singing, dancing, rhyming and this can be done at home sharing songs and having a lovely time together 😀

Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Special Event

Buckingham Palace comes to Cart mill!

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The children have been very excited this week learning all about the Queen and her upcoming Platinum Jubilee. In the garden they worked together using the big building blocks to build Buckingham Palace or “the Queens house” as the children liked to call it!

We added cylinders to our Palace to make turrets and the children wanted a ramp at the front to slide out.


The blue blanket was used to create water in front of the Palace and other blankets to make a bridge at the side!

”The bridge is a shaky bridge to keep people out!”

”No one can get to our Queen across the water!”

The coloured material was used by the children to dress up as the Queen in her Palace. They had great fun roleplaying all different scenarios pretending to be royalty.

The children decided the Palace needed a flag so we painted some cardboard in red and blue to create a flag!

We taped a cane to our flag and stuck it in the Palace.

The children were very proud of their Palace and flag! They had lots of fun playing in it and it attracted other children to come and play too!  We are all looking forward to continuing our Jubilee theme with our party tomorrow.

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Let’s Make a Nursery Rhyme Basket

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Today in the noisy and quiet room the children decided to make a nursery rhyme basket. First, we went on a prop hunt and filled our basket up with all the nursery rhymes props we could find. We found quite a lot of small toys that we could use which related to nursery rhymes. We had lots of fun looking for, and putting together our nursery rhyme basket.

“ I found a bus”

“I found a fish and a star”                      “ Look I found a mouse”

” I found a spider”

It was a great way to get everyone involved and we had lots of fun on our rhyme hunt. Well done every one good job ! 👍

We then sat down to explore our basket whilst singing our song “ what’s inside our basket, our basket, will ( name of child) like to have a look.”
The children took it in turns picking out their favourite nursery  rhyme props  whilst singing the rhyme and doing the actions within the group.


The children used the experience to enhance their language as they recited their favourite nursery rhymes, it was a great activity for children learning English as an additional language too. By using the props, it really bought the songs to life and helped develop further skills, such as recognising and naming objects and simple story sequencing. The children developed their social skills by demonstrating the need to take turns and shared their songs with others in the group. The children also developed their fine motor skills by moving their fingers and hands.

Why not make a nursery rhymes basket at home, see what you can find around your home that matches with nursery rhymes and let us know how you get on!😊