Category Archives: Mindful moments

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, life cycles, Mindful moments, nature, Outdoor Learning

Days in the Garden 🪴

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In the garden this week during sunshine and showers we have been very busy.

The girls and boys have expressed their artistic skills with some great art work on our giant easel. They picked colours of paint , mixed some colours and had lots of fun  creating giant pieces of art.  This type of play  will help the children develop large muscle use as well as co ordination and balance.

At the obstacle course the girls and boys were developing their balancing skills. It was lovely to see the children offering to help each other when they had a bit of a wobble  !  They were also encouraging each other “ put your arms out it will help”.

During the wet days we ask the children to put on their wellies and puddle suits “with a little help” to help them develop their independence. When all suited up we have great fun running and jumping into the puddles. Some of the children were keen to make bigger puddles and cleverly notice if they collected the rain water from the pipes they could add it to their puddles .

In the garden we have been looking at the Life Cycle of the sun flower. In spring the children had planted seeds and watched them grow learning that they required to be watered and also grew more in the sunshine. As the sunflowers have now finished flowering  we have picked them and started harvesting the seeds ready for re planting next spring. Pulling out the seeds gives the children an opportunity to develop their fine motor skills and hand eye co-ordination skills.

Finally this week we decided just to have fun with the soil . This gives us the opportunity to  explore using our senses “ it’s softer than sand”  I think it “feels cold” well it smells like “a farm”. It can make mud pie castles and I will squash mine down !. Being in the garden  helps reduce stress levels, improve mood and enhance self esteem whilst also being a good form of exercise.

We are looking forward to next week in the garden as we explore our outdoors.

Article – We have a  right to learn and explore outdoors.

Creative movement, Creativity, Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Mindful moments, nature, Outdoor Learning, Social Studies, Special Event

Garden roundup

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It’s been a busy week for us in the garden. We are developing our motor skills in a variety of ways.


This simple but effective experience enabled the children to experiment with colour mixing as well as developing their fine motor and early writing skills as they made marks on the foil using different  tools.

“ The blue got on the yellow and now the yellow looks a bit green”.

“I making fireworks”


The fireworks have really grabbed the children’s attention and been the topic of conversation. Throwing the powder paint on the ground sparked an idea. “The ground is black like the sky at night”

They threw lots of different colours on the ground and used small and large items to move and redirect the paint in different shapes and patterns.


Learning how to move our bodies in different ways to develop our gross motor skills and mark making skills has been so much fun.

We filled some tights with different materials such as sponges, pasta, pom poms and balls and used them to create a piece of art. This allowed the children to explore descriptive language as they figured out how to make marks on the foil.

“The pasta is spikey”

“ This one is really heavy I had to spin round and round to get the paint up there”

“ I want to get it to the top so I have to stretch my legs and stand on my tiptoes and do a big jump”

To end the week we thought it would be a good idea to begin learning about Remembrance Day and why we mark this as a special day. We watched a short child friendly video about the Poppy and decided to create our own.
The children used cut up potatoes and loose parts to make marks on the paper to create a lovely picture.

“ My dad wears a poppy for all the soldiers”

“ We can put purple on it too to remember the Animals”

Creativity, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Mindful moments

When Harry Potter came to Forest School!

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It was a dull and wet start to forest school today, but in true Cart Mill style we didn’t let that dampen our enthusiasm! We popped on our waterproofs and off we set!  As we are such experienced explorers, we were able to navigate our way there, remembering the busy roads we had to cross and to look our for “the white house with the rainbow flower in the garden we saw last week!” so that we knew where to turn to find our forest.   Being our usual inquisitive self’s, we spotted some signs along the way.  At Field Grove we were able to spot “that’s an L for my mummy’s name.” “My mummy has an L too, and my brother has a r”.

When we arrived at our site we remembered all the hazards we had chatted about last week and were able to carry out our own risk assessment and set our boundaries.

Bug hunting has been a real area of interest and we have been doing lots of research on bugs.  What better place to search for “real” bugs than in our forest!  Off we set with our magnifying glasses 🔍.  It was so much fun to search under logs, on trees and even in the mud to see what we could find!


We were amazed to find “sammy snail”,  “super slug”, “colin” who was a millipede and a whole family of woodlouse! Who knew we would find a baby worm that “looks like an angry eyeball”. Dr Doolittle had better watch out! 🐛

“It’s a C for my name”.

“Look it’s crawling on my arm!”

Of course as it was so wet we decided our bugs would need a bug house! After lots of discussion we collected our building materials. Working together we built a “super special” house for our bug family.

“This can be the roof.”

“This stone is big.  They can sit or sleep on it.”

“This can be the food. They might be hungry.  I’m hungry, when can we have snack?”

After a quick snack and a wee recharge we noticed the sun had appeared! Off we set to find some sticks! This sparked an impromptu game of forest “freeze” and “unfreeze” using our “Harry Potter wands” while “Harry Potter” himself flew above us on his “broomstick” along with “a flying car that goes invisible”.

“I’m Harry Potter flying on my broomstick”.

”I’m flying.  I’m in a flying car. I can spread my wings and fly over you”.

Before we left we had a wonderful mindful moment, sparked entirely by a cry of “stop talking and listen”. “I can hear the birds.  They’re making a woo hoo sound”.  “I can hear the wind blowing through the trees”.  We even spotted a pigeons nest high up in the trees.

Our tired legs got us back to Cart Mill safely, even spotting a number sign along the way.

“It says 20”.

This week we have been navigators, explorers, bug hunters, builders, flying cars and our favourite of all, Harry Potter! We truly do have fabulous forest schoolers at Cart Mill and we can’t wait for another amazing adventure next week!

Article 29 – I have the right to an education which develops my personality, respect for others’ rights and the environment.