Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Creative movement, Imaginative thinking, Outdoor Learning

Ready steady balance

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The children have been very enthusiastic building their own obstacle course outdoors. The children have been working together as a team discussing where each piece Is going, sharing ideas and problem solving.

The children were then eager to trial their course and all took turns using their gross motor skill and balancing skills. The majority of the children  found this very easy and could quickly move around their course. They were still excited and decided and all followed each other round waiting patiently for others and helping one another.

Over the week we decided we  would add some extra bit to make it more challenging for some of the children. We added  various .objects etc ladders, elevating the planks so they could balancing walking up and down the ramp. stepping over the briidge. Some of the children were also able to stand on one leg  and balance while on the raised wooden plank.The children had to concentrate more and take their time to ensure the did not fall off and the crocodiles did not catch them.

 

This week some of our children went out into our local environment and met with St Joseph primary school to do litter picking to keep our local environment safe and clean. the children worked in pairs to hunt for rubbish using their litter pickers to pick gather all the rubbish. This was a great opportunity for some our children to be meet others from the school they will attend. We are so proud of the teamwork and our children helping to look after our environment.

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Block building, Creativity, Imaginative thinking, life cycles, Mindful moments, nature, Outdoor Learning

Working with Nature in the Cartmill Garden 🪴

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The last few weeks in the garden have been so busy and very exciting. We had the pleasure of a visit from Carolside Primary 7 pupils who brought some bird houses to paint with our children. They also spent time playing with our boys and girls and were shown round our lovely new garden.

The girls and boys were also busy building a bug 🐛 hotel using their construction and problem solving skills. The best part is looking everyday to see who may have checked in.

Another visitor to the nursery was a teacher from Williamwood High School . She spoke to the children about the bees 🐝 that they keep and spoke about different types of bees , how they gather pollen and make honey. She kindly brought a bee suit and smoker for us to see and we even got to try on a bee suit which keeps you safe when working with the bees 🐝.

In the garden we have been  we have been working with our willow sticks. We had some help to cut up the branches then used them for the bug hotel, painting and weaving  sticks to hang on our “fairy tree”.

When  playing in the garden we are alway looking out for signs of nature.  Very exciting was a wasps nest being built in one of our bird house we had a careful look then removed it to a safe space.

Finally we are continuing to care for our plants 🌱 and vegetables 🥕 and watching them grow.

The girls and boys have really enjoyed the last few weeks in the garden and we are looking forward to celebrating National Bee Day on the 20th May.

Article -Children have a right to be outdoors and explore.

Creative movement, Outdoor Learning

SIMOA safe in our garden

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We loved watching the diggers and the landscaping team create our new garden space. It’s fabulous having more space to play. We have a big sandpit we can go in and play with and we love it. We can’t wait to plant and grow in our wonderful planters see all the beautiful flowers.

One day we noticed the cold weather had made our garden a bit slippy. We went out to check if our garden was safe to play in.

This sparked an idea. Let’s make our own risk assessment to incorporate our new garden areas.  So we went around the garden looking for possible risks.

Our children were very safety conscious and could tell me what is safe and what’s not safe. We took photos of our areas and with a little IT help we made our own safety garden risk assessment.

Before we go out to play our responsible helpers get their clip boards and pens to check our garden. Some of the areas we check are:

our gates,

Our sand,

our tyres,

our stepping logs,

And our doors,

Once we give it all a safety tick, it’s time to come out and play. We have also been learning about risk and staying safe on our obstacle course. How to build it safely aswell as staying safe while completing the course.

 

We do love risky play, even more now we know how to do it safely.

Some times we do forget, so Emma came up with a catchy wee tune to remind us how to stay “SIMOA Safe”.

We will be learning this song over the next few weeks. (You might recognise the tune from our Christmas concert. ) Watch this space for a video of our children singing it.

 

 

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, nature, Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Classroom Day

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Today we took part in Outdoor Classroom Day. Learning in an outdoor environment helps to ensure positive intellectual, emotional, and social development whilst building the foundations for a lifelong connection with nature and our planet.

We have developed our throwing, counting and turn taking skills while playing the bean bag toss…

We have developed our literacy, drama and cooperation skills while re-telling the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff…

We have learned about the seasons and that we need to help feed the animals during the cold months while making bird feeders…

And we have learned how to keep the bugs safe in our garden by making a bug hotel..

We even found our first guest for the hotel- a baby slug…

Article 31- we have the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of activities.

Creative movement, Creativity, Imaginative thinking, Outdoor Learning

Wild animals in action!

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All things wild and wonderful has been a continuing theme in our garden this week! We love small world play and are always keen to introduce our favourite animals, figures and vehicles! Small world play is a fantastic way to develop our imagination, creativity and problem solving skills.  We loved one of our friend t-shirts and this sparked the idea to explore wild animals! Delving into our resources we discovered elephants, tigers, gorillas, rhinos, tigers and lions “the king of the jungle!”

One of our favourite books is Rumble in the Jungle and we had so much fun retelling  the story using our animals, adding a “roar for the lion”, “oooh-oooh, aah-aah like the monkey”,  and our favourite actions for the elephant, chimpanzee and sssssssssnake!

We shared our experiences of visiting “Edinburgh zoo” “the safari park” and chatted about the animals we had seen and which were our favourites. Taking turns, we discussed our favourite animals and shared our fantastic knowledge about the features of each animal!
“the elephant has a trunk, it drinks the water and then spits it out all over its head, like a shower”. “The lion was sleeping and it did a big roar”, the giraffe has a big long neck. It doesn’t have any hands so it uses its big long tongue to eat leaves on the tree. It’s tongue is blue, like my top!”

Next we decided to move like our favourite animals! We agreed that the giraffe is “very tall so we have to reach up to the sky, on our tippy toes”, “the hippo rolls in the mud, like this”, “the crocodile snaps like this”, and the cheetah runs really fast”.


We demonstrated that we can hold balance in various shapes when moving, are aware of and can control our personal space and body parts when moving, perform basic movements such as jumping, hopping and running and move different parts of our bodies at different speeds.

The weather may have been wild but we have had a wonderful time and had so much fun, ROAR!

Article 29: I have the right to an education which develops my personality, traits and abilities.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Imaginative thinking, nature, Outdoor Learning

Our Exciting Garden 🪴

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Our garden has been very busy and we have especially enjoyed the better weather over the last few days. Playing outdoors allows children develop self-confidence, independence and self-esteem. Their physical health improves through exercise and vitamin D, enhanced mental well-being, better sleep quality and increased social interaction and development.
Of course we are just having lots of fun !!
We have enjoyed developing our obstacle course adding on extra challenges ….

”round and round gets me dizzy”

How many steps to get to the bridge ?

The boys and girls had great fun on be a Pirate day ….

We used our creativity and problem solving skills to build a pirate ship …..

Ooh arrrgh if the pirates caught you they would make you walk the plank into shark infested waters

In the water tray the water had turned red “my hands are red when they are under the water. We did lots of poring and filling to get rid of our Red Sea 🌊

Finally we have been enjoying some theatre shows on the Cartmill stage showing off our creativity, imagination and acting skills along with some great singing .

After such a busy few days we are all ready for our holiday weekend which we hope you all enjoy.

Article – Children have the right to play and explore their outdoor environment.

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Fun with paint!

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Today in the Pond the two year olds were making the most of the sunshine in the garden. With this being Maths Week Scotland we decided to explore shapes and patterns whilst still getting messy and having lots of fun.

We got some paint trays and rolled our toy cars in the paint! We then rolled them on a large piece of paper to see what patterns we could make with the tracks!

We then decided to roll or cars down a ramp and onto the paper to see if the patterns were different!

“It’s very fast!”

This activity helps to develop the children’s fine and gross motor skills whilst exploring colour and pattern.

The children then decided they wanted to dip the wooden shapes in the paint and stamp them on to the paper!

“A yellow square and a red triangle!”

”It’s a rainbow!”

The children showed great imagination, creating lovely pictures!

In the Pond it’s the messier the better so there was some colour mixing going on too!

“I’m rubbing them together to make purple!! Look!”

What a great morning we had exploring patterns, shapes and colours in a fun, engaging and creative way!

 

 

Article 31 ~ Children have the right to play and participate in artistic activities.

 

Baking, Creativity, nature, Outdoor Learning

Busy Bakers

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Welcome to our mud kitchen! We have had so much fun being busy bakers and creative chefs. We have introduced some new resources to enrich our play and the children have loved exploring everything!

We have added lots of things you would find in a kitchen including; mugs, bowls, plates, pots and baking tins as well as lots of kitchen utensils. The children had helped to choose the resources from the catalogue so they were very excited when they arrived.

Before we could open our cafe, we had to decide on a name. Everyone came up with ideas before we voted for Rainbow Cafe!

For our first masterchef experience in our cafe we used our senses to make various cakes, soup, spaghetti bolognaise and lots of other delicious recipes. We looked at our fruity ingredients and we felt them between our fingers, then we explored the different smells, such as lemon, lime and orange. The children talked about their favourite scent and said that lime was the most popular.

The children showed great imagination and, using their mark making skills, took orders to give through to the chefs who were busy creating the orders, squeezing the juices from the fruits and stirring the ingredients together.

Everybody is most welcome at the Rainbow Cafe, you can find us in Cart Mill garden, open 5 days a week! Bon appetit!

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.

Outdoor Learning

Hi from the pond

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Welcome to our Pond!  Over the last couple of weeks we have been settling into our new surroundings, learning our new routines and getting to know one another.  So far, a firm favourite for us all has been snack and lunchtime!  We are practising our independence skills by choosing which fruit we would like and are enjoying serving our own snack.

Exploring our garden has been lots of fun and we have enjoyed climbing, crawling and jumping!

Using our senses, we have investigated filling and pouring in our water tray, planting seeds for our garden (we really enjoyed mixing the soil to make our own mud), and making different marks and shapes in the sand.

It has been lots of fun so far and we are excited to learn and explore new things over the next few weeks!