Category Archives: Numeracy

Expressive Arts, Technologies

Cart Mill Engineers

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Today the children have been very busy in the Construction area.

They used their team working skills to discuss and create a plan to build a new bridge and roads.

They spoke about the different shapes and sizes of the blocks and how they would join together so that the road didn’t have ‘bumps’ on it .

“You need big muscles to be able to carry the big blocks”

“This block is wider than that one”

“We can make a ramp so the cars can go up and down,  the car can’t jump up”

They added in ‘funny shaped blocks’ to create  roundabouts for the cars to go round.

Once all the pieces were joined together for the road, they looked for bigger blocks for the bridge.

“This big one can be the start of the bridge and then we’ll add 4 bigger ones it will be so tall”

The children used their problem solving skills as they worked together to make the roads and bridge safe for the cars to drive on. They carried out a test run and a final check, then the bridge was complete.

Outdoor Learning

All sorts of measure

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Today in the garden the boys and girls enjoyed exploring measurement through investigating the size, amounts and capacity of various items.


The children used standard and non standard units to measure and compare the height of each other, plants and water.

Some of our children were able to compare size and volume using comparative language such as “tall and taller” and “ full and empty”

“Look at this they’re the same”

Why don’t you see what you can use to measure different items at home?

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Let’s have fun with Syllables!

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Today in  our new ‘noisy and quiet’ room the children have been busy exploring the noisy side using musical instruments and their voices. We all joined together and  slowly clapped out the number of syllables in each of our names and counted how many there were. We found that most  of us had two,  and some of us only had one, so we decided to clap to our second names too. We discovered that most of us had three syllables in our second name’s. The children were able to recognise and clap out the number of syllables in their own names and were able to count out their  friends names.
“my name has two”


“ I have three  syllables  in my name “


“ I have more in my second name”

We then decided we would choose our favourite musical instruments and use them to develop our skills further.

“ I am going to choose the drum”

 
We had lots of instrument to choose from.

“I  am going to count my name using the maracas”

The children were learning to develop their vocabulary,  pre -phonics skills, and understanding of sounds and patterns within words through play. They were able to listen and respond to instructions whilst showing respect for each other through sharing and taking turns.



“ I can count out my syllables  on the wooden sound maker”

“ I am going to use the big drum”

“I am enjoying playing on the big  drum and making sounds”.



We even found out we can count out syllables on the piano. WOW!

Why not try it at home! You could use compound words that form two words such as: sunset , hotdog,  snowman or postman. To start with children just need to be able to recognise syllables by clapping, stamping or jumping for each syllable.  We had lots of fun dividing words into syllables. Why not give it a try at home and let us know how you got on. Have fun playing with words!

 

 

 

 

Uncategorized

Crunchy Fruit Cups!

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Today the children decided they would make something new and a little different. They looked through our ingredients and chose what they wanted to use.

“I think we could use Cornflakes I know they taste good, I have them for my breakfast”.

“What about some cherries, they are my favourite fruit and my favourite colour , red”.

“Yogurt is nice I have that for my lunch.”

“Raisins are my favourite, I want to use them.”

“ I like syrup it is sweet I want to. Put that into my cake.”

Everyone got to work crunching up the corn flakes using rolling pins. Then it was time to put our cornflakes into a bowl and add 1 teaspoon of syrup. “Only a little it’s not good for your teeth.”

“mix, mix mix”

The children carefully cut up their cherries using their fantastic fine motor skills.  “1,2,3,4,5 I have 5 cherries”

Next it was time to add two tablespoons of raisins and mix it all together.  “It’s a bit sticky” I will need to wash my hands after this.”

Finally, they then transferred the mixture to paper cases and added a tablespoon of dairy free yogurt.

“ I need more yogurt .” “ I think the cakes will taste yummy!”

It was time to put them  into the freezer to set . The children worked well together and demonstrated good use of mathematical language, for example more and less.  They also used lots descriptive language such as bumpy, crunchy, sticky. The children noticed that the texture of the yogurt  changed after it came out of the freezer.

“It’s cold and hard now”

The children are so excited to finally taste their Crunchy Fruit Cups! Fabulous work everyone, well done!

Outdoor Learning

Blossom mud pie

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The children were having lots of fun in the mud kitchen today making lots of delicious food but they needed more ‘ingredients’ so we decided to go a local walk to collect some flowers that had fallen off the trees.


Once we had collected lots of blossom, we took it back to nursery and into the mud kitchen. The children decided they would like to make a blossom mud pie, so we got to work on the recipe. The children worked as a team to collect all the ingredients, measure, empty and fill the containers before voila! A mud pie, hand decorated with the blossom.

Once our blossom pie was ready the children took it over to our ‘restaurant’ and cut it into pieces giving everyone a bit.

”This is so yummy”
Who knew mud could look so good!

Uncategorized

Addition & Subtraction

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Today has been an exciting day as the children moved from the Home Room into the Discovery Room. They have been busy investigating and exploring the new areas.

They have enjoyed using the Promethean active board in particular, where they explored a variety of numeracy games through Top Marks. You could try these at home too on  www.topmarks.co.uk


The children developed their numeracy skills, fine motor skills, hand/eye coordination, as well as sharing, taking turns and recognising the need to follow rules.  We had great fun being able to identify and recognise numbers 0-20. We were able to estimate how many without having to count. The children counted forwards and backwards and were learning how to add and subtract. We all enjoyed learning new language to describe subtraction and adding e.g take away; add one more on. “I have to put one back”  “we need two more to make ten”.

Later in the day the children decided they wanted to get fit and do a sticky kids exercise activities.

We had so much fun listening and following the actions whilst showing off our gross motor skills, balancing skills, jumping and developing our awareness of space. Well done everyone! Why not give it a go at home 👍

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Making Christmas memories

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Today in the home room the children have been busy making their very own Christmas tree ornaments  using salt dough and their own creative skills!

We demonstrated good social skills by working together to carefully measuring the ingredients and adding them to a bowl to mix.

We exercised our manipulative and fine motor skills  and we strengthened our muscles through lots of mixing, kneading, rolling and cutting our dough.

We listened carefully and demonstrated we are very careful when using an oven as it can get very hot! We baked our dough  shapes in the oven to make them hard.

We decorated our decorations with our own choice of coloured paint, glitter and snow dust. We then tied some beautiful ribbon to them so we can hang them on our tree,


Uncategorized

Numberblock fun!

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Today in the Discovery Room we have had lots of fun developing our numeracy skills through use of our Numberblocks!

Firstly we practiced our number recognition skills. We were able to correctly identify the number on each card. Some of us were able to do this by looking just at the number and some of us counted the blocks.

We then used our amazing 1-1 correspondence and fine motor skills to build the correct number block for each card. It was a bit tricky clicking the blocks together but we worked together as a team and helped each other.

We were also able to recognise and name all the different colours and build a rainbow number 7!

Next we decided to challenge ourselves further to see if we could correctly build and sequence the number blocks in order. We were able to identify the numbers that came before and after and which number block was the biggest and smallest.

“I maked all the blocks1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 10 is the biggest.”

We even used the same colours as the real number blocks!

We were having so much fun that we decided to challenge ourselves further by using the activity cards to see if we could add numbers together.

“It’s 3, 4 and 7!”

We even created our own numberblocks using our fabulous mark making skills!


“It’s all the numberblocks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Technology

Forwards and backwards with the bee bots🐝

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This morning in the discovery room the children decided to make a track for the bee bots to move around on.

They used different shaped blocks to create a track that was flat enough for the bee bots to move along .
We looked at the arrows on top and discussed what they mean.

”This button means forward”

”what is this one mean?”

“backwards backwards”


The children used the direction cards and placed them along the track.

“Let’s  go forward like this card”

”The green one is go”


They used their numeracy skills as they counted how many times they  pressed the forwards button and how many places the bee moved forward.

In the end they raced the bees to see who would move the furthest, it was a lot of fun cheering on the bees.

 

Expressive Arts

Let’s count with Bookbug!

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Today Bookbug came to visit! Bookbug knew we have been taking part in Maths Week Scotland here at Cart Mill and wanted to introduce us to number songs and rhymes.
BookBug brought his box filled with wonderful visual aids, puppets and books to help us have fun with our numeracy and maths skills through our songs and rhymes.

We started off by singing our welcome song to warm up all our voices.
We sang our number songs next such as 1,2,3,4,5 and 5 little peas. These songs teach us to count forwards in sequence.
We then sang songs such as 5 little ducks and 5 fat sausages to help us practice counting backwards in sequence. Ours songs also introduced us to early mathematical concepts such as adding and subtracting.

Then the stretchy Lycra came out and the puppets were bouncing and jumping up and down! We were using our listening skills, hand-eye co-ordination as well as numeracy and rhyming skills.

We all enjoyed singing number songs with Bookbug.

Numbers are all around us. Songs and rhymes are a fantastic way for us to learn and develop our numeracy and mathematical skills. What number songs can you sing at home?