This week we have taken two groups to the forest to experience learning in the wild! Forest School is a fabulous experience that we run for our pre-school children which has many benefits for them. Over the past couple of days we have seen the children flourish in their new environment. As it was our introductory week, we spoke about hazards and risks and how we were going to keep safe. We set some boundaries, they were far away so we had lots of space to explore but we could always be seen by an adult!
We looked at trees that might be good to climb and then we climbed! We squelched in the mud, a lot, some of us even lost our wellies in the muddy mess!
We explored nature, there were lots of plants to look at and one in particular we could smell. Wild garlic! It was everywhere, so we felt very hungry. We stopped for some snack before going to find more to explore.
Then we went to look at the horses in the field next door. They were munching on their grass so didn’t want to come and see us.
Before we knew it, it was time to go back to Cart Mill but we can’t wait to get out again next week.
Category Archives: Outdoor Learning
Street Art Garden. 🌼🌸🌺
Some of our children have been commenting on the wonderful, colourful flowers we have growing in our garden.
This was the inspiration for our next street art creation in our gross motor art area in our garden.
We chose colours that we thought were like the ones we had seen on our flowers. One of the children wanted pink. Using our colour mixing skills, we mixed our red and white to make a pastel pink colour. We also mixed red and blue together with a little white to create a wonderful deep purple colour.
We made some flowers on our ground in chalk as the start of our street art creation and got our paints and brushes ready to use. As we were using the ground as our canvas, we made sure we put on our welly boots and aprons to protect our clothes.
Now for the fun part. To get creating and using our gross motor art skills.
Some of our children wanted to use the paints to colour in the chalk outlines.
Some of our children wanted to design their own flowers using lots of different colours to create a rainbow flower.
We were enjoying having the freedom to create and use the paints in our design process on a larger scale.
We spoke about what kind of flowers we were making for our street art garden. We had Daffodils, Tulips, Sunflowers and even a Spider-Man flower.
Some children were finding their own spontaneous inspiration and created different shapes.
We even made numbers and fruits as well with one child creating a green apple and a yellow banana.
We had so much fun painting our street art garden in the sun and letting our creative thinking shine.
I think our street art garden looks as wonderful and as colourful as the real flowers in our garden.
Article 21 – “Your education should help you use and develop your talents and abilities. It should also help you to learn to live peacefully, protect the environment and respect other people.”
Gardening is Great!
We love gardening in Cart Mill and the weather never stops us getting out to see what we have growing in our garden. As it has been a little cold recently, we took a trip into the greenhouse to see if any of our seeds had popped up through the soil and they had! We checked that everything had enough water to drink and looked to see if any of the plant pots needed turned round – did you know that plants grow towards the light so sometimes they can look a little squint when they start to grow?
With everything looking okay, we thought we would test out our sense of smell. We have some herbs growing in the greenhouse at the moment so we each got to pick a small leaf and rub it around in our fingers. Then we had to take a big, deep sniff and guess what we could smell – it was mint! It was just like toothpaste.
We then moved outside to see what was growing in the planters. We have some lovely spring flowers growing but we suddenly spotted some big green leaves – is it cabbage?
No, on closer inspection, we discovered it was rhubarb. We wondered if there was anywhere we could use some rhubarb – I know, we could give it to Gail and she could help us make some rhubarb muffins! So, we decided to pick some – but not too much, to hand in to the baking area. It was quite hard to pull but we tugged and we twisted and CRACK, out the stalk of rhubarb came. After thinking about it, we decided that two stalks would be enough.
By now it was raining quite heavily so we thought we better go inside. Although, we had one last use for our rhubarb, an umbrella!
Gardening with children has so many benefits, which is why we are so fond of promoting it at Cart Mill. Benefits include: improving your mood, gardening reduces stresses and improves your overall mood; it is a great form of exercise, gardening is physical and can keep children active; understanding nature, gardening allows children to get close to worms, bees, flowers etc; stimulate senses, gardening helps us use all our senses; gardening can promote healthier eating, children also get an understanding of where food comes from and how it looks in its natural form; it is cheap, gardening is a great way to learn together with very little cost, even if you don’t have outdoor space, you can grow tomatoes or peppers from seed at your window; It is fun! The most important part of gardening, you can explore, investigate and see thing happen – sometimes you just need to be a little patient!
Our Local Landmarks
Last week the children were creating bridges and castles. We looked up the squinty bridge ( Clyde Arc) and Stirling Castle. Quite a few of the children recognised the bridge.
So this week we decided we would go and explore our own local environment.
We had a think about what we needed to do to keep us safe when we are out a walk.
“ we need to hold hand & listen”
”watch the roads”
” walk nice”
” have fun”
First of all we passed the spider park and continued towards the forest where we could hear the water so we went to explore and we found our very own bridge! “can we pick up sticks and watch them go under bridge?”
The children had fun playing Pooh sticks – throwing their sticks and running to the other side to watch for their stick coming. We then walked further along and found an even bigger bridge.
“ it’s so big I can’t see over”
“The cars go over this one”
“I can hear the train”
“My house is up there and there’s another bridge”
It was now getting close to lunch time and it was time to head back the children were using great listening skills and road safety and we spotted lsome more familiar landmarks Williamwood high school and Bonnyton House. They were also intrigued by the black and white cat.
Today the children have been busy using their gross motor skills and imaginations to build bridges similar to those they have seen in our local environment. The children shared their thoughts and ideas, and used mathematical language to describe how their towers were going to look. They had great concentration and problem solving skills to ensure they would stay up and connect.
children working together as a team
“We are making the one we were on yesterday, Lots of people can walk over it .”
”mine is going to be so long”
Some of the children chose to create their own bridge.
“I am going to make a bridge for cars”
”Look how high it is”
“I have 6 cars on mine”
”“I will make one for people”
” I am putting signs on my bridge”
Creating The Cart Mill Scarecrow!
In our garden adventures on Wednesday, we dove into the beloved story of “The Scarecrows Wedding” by Julia Donaldson. Inspired by the tale, one of our little minds proposed an exciting idea – let’s make our own scarecrow to protect our plants from hungry birds!
”The birds like to eat fruit so they maybe will eat our seeds”
Excitement bubbled as we brainstormed what we’d need, just like in the story we got to work and wrote some lists. These included:
- Straw
- Clothes
- Hat
- Scarf
- Head
- Legs
- Face
With our list in hand, we turned to the internet for guidance. Click the link to try building a scarecrow at home. How to build a scarecrow
Today was the big day! We gathered our supplies and got busy.
First, we stuffed some old clothes with straw to make our scarecrow’s body. We made sure everything was nice and secure.
Next came the fun part – creating the face! We discussed facial features together and gave it some eyes, a nose and a big friendly smile. We also gave it some lovely Cart Mill branding.
Once the body and face were ready, we used sticks from our willow tree to give our scarecrow a strong frame. Then, we proudly placed it in the garden to stand guard over our precious veggies.
As we admired our handiwork, one question remained: What should we name our new friend? Suggestions flew around, each more imaginative than the last. It came to a vote and we decided on Harry!
With our scarecrow watching over the garden, we wrapped up another day of fun and learning in our outdoor classroom. 😀
Article 13 (freedom of expression)
Article 31 (leisure, play and culture)
Article 28 (right to education)
The Bug Collectors
The children have noticed that when it is raining we find more worms in the garden. Today we decided to go on a bug hunt to discover what other bugs live in our garden. We started by reading the story of The Bug Collector.
We talked about all the different bugs in the story and which ones we though we might find today. The children also shared stories of their own bug hunts..
“I have a frog in my garden and one time a bee landed on my nose.”
“I saw a frog in the fountain at Greenbank Gardens.”
Next we got our magnifying glasses and our bug catchers and set off round the garden. The children said we need to look under things because the bugs like living underground. Look at all the worms we found…
We decided to move them somewhere safe so “the birds can’t get them.”
Then we discovered lots of spider webs but we didn’t see any spiders! We thought they must be hiding from the rain so we decided to make our own. We looked at the story of ‘Aargh Spider’ to see what the webs and the spiders look like then created some beautiful bug artwork…
“I made a bed for my spider to sleep in.”
What can you find in your garden? Please share with us @cartmillcentre
Article 13- Every child must be free to express their
thoughts and opinions and to access all
kinds of information.
Perfectly Patterned Pictures
We have really enjoyed making patterns in our gross motor art area. We have investigated making marks with a variety of resources. We’ve used plungers to make circle prints.
We have used a selection of different types and sizes of brushes to see what marks and patterns we can create with them, such as large paint bushes, rollers, sweeping brushes and scrubbing brushes.
After we used our tyres to make large patterns we wondered what we could use next?
Luckily we got a special delivery. A new gross motor art tool to help us further develop our gross motor art skills.
We got brand new large pattern rollers. We couldn’t wait to get a turn of them and try them out.
First we tried putting a large sheet of paper down to see what marks we could make.
We enjoyed rolling the large rollers in the paint then pushing them over the paper, but it soon got filled up and we couldn’t see which patterns we had made. We decided to make it even more fun by taking the paper away. To have a larger area to explore our patterns and progress our skills even more.
By using the ground as our canvas, we could go further, see our marks more clearly and change direction.
We needed lots of paint to extend our marks, we rolled our roller in the paint and set off.
On one roller we had stripes.
And on the other we had spots.
We created a wonderful pattern picture in our gross motor art area for every one to admire.
We all were engaged and enjoyed this experience. Everyone was keen to have a turn. We were able to wait our turn and share.
Now that we have investigated patterns in our gross motor art area next we will be looking at “Street Art.” We have added some pictures of local murals that are around Glasgow to inspire our children to create their own.
I wonder what Street Art we will be creating next?
Goldilocks and the three bears 👩🦳🐻🐻🐻
Today in the garden we invited the children to read and retell the story of Goldilocks and the three bears.
“We’re going out on a walk to the woods”
“Mummy bears bowl of porridge”
“Someone been eating my porridge and they have eaten it all up”
We provided the children with some puppets and props to explore the story. The children have been using role play to act out the characters from the familiar story recalling the main events.
“This one’s just right”
“Now the porridge is to cold”
Some children found some ice in the garden and stared to collect it in the bowl and started playing around with changing the story.
Story telling has so many learning opportunities for our children, it’s great to tell these stories in a way that captures the interests of our individual children.
World Book Day coming up on the 7th March. What book will you read?
Article 15 – You have the right to choose your own friends and join in groups
Terrific tyre treads and painty patterns in the puddles
In our gross motor art area in the garden we have been exploring art on a large scale. So far we have used large brushes, mops, spray bottles and plungers. Today however we decided to make our art even bigger.
We decided to use the tyres to roll in the paint and see the patterns it made. We popped on our wellies and puddlesuits due to the rain showers we had this morning, and got to work creating our massive masterpiece.
It was interesting to see the different patterns the tyre made depending on where it rolled.
We had long tread marks and circles prints where it landed.
Because of the rain our patterns washed away quickly so we just had to make more.
It was a bit tricky at first to roll the tyre all the way across on our own ,we problem solved and thought, how about making it a team effort.
So we worked together to roll the tyres back and forward to each other. Team work made the art work!
We investigated who could push it the furthest and what kind of patterns did we make if we pushed it faster or slower.
We had so much fun with this large scale art outdoor experience. It was funny when the tyre splatted in the paint in the middle.
We tried different colours of powder paint to see which colours made the best pattern.
The rain got a little heavy at one point, but it mixed in with the powder paint and made our paint mix together and create much more paint puddles to roll our tyre into.
This was a great experience for our children of all ages to expand and inspire their creative designs, while also developing their gross motor skills.
We had our gross motor art tools beside us incase any one wanted to choose a different way to create art, but the tyre was the winner today.
Gladiators Ready 💪
The children have been talking about watching gladiators in nursery with some very enthusiastic chat about which gladiator is their favourite. Viper is definitely not popular; “He breaks all the rules!”
We decided to create our very own Eliminator course in the garden….
The children are encouraged at each stage to assess their own risk and make sure they feel safe taking part. They were given three options and it is up to them to take the option the they are most comfortable with.
Many of the children started on the lower beam but as they gained confidence progressed to the high beam and were really proud of their achievement!
Some of the children decided to play a round of power ball. This is the game where the contenders have to get past the gladiators to put the ball in the basket. The children were great at taking turns of being the contender or the gladiator, brilliant cooperative play!
“Contenders, ready? Gladiators ready? 3,2,1, go!”
“I’m going to be Giant.” “I’m going to be Nitro.”
Who is your favourite gladiator?
UNCRC Article 31- You have the right to play by doing things like sports and drama.
