Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Learning, Snack, Special Event

☀️Sun days are fun days !☀️

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With our summer term  ending and many of our children getting ready to finish their time with us to move on to school….

What better way to enjoy our last days of nursery and the most likely (but hopefully not) the glorious  sunshine, was to spend today having a fun day having some slippy sunny day sliding on our big water slide!
Using our soapy liquid and our running water hose  we had lots of exciting fun and laughs sliding down our hilly slope.

As you can tell it wasn’t just the children who had all the fun! 😀

We used our bodies in different ways to find the most fun and fastest ways to go down!

The most difficult part was the climb back up the hill to the top; it was well worth it though for those few moments we had laughing all the way down!
Once we were all dried off and changed into dry clothing we cooled off and enjoyed a relaxing snack with an icy treat! 😎

Sunny days are the best!

Outdoor Learning

Grassy games

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This morning we went out to the grassy area behind the nursery to play some ball games. These games are designed to encourage colour recognition, sorting and team work.
We started by playing a game of beans to warm up our bodies. In this game the children have to act out the name of the bean e.g. runner beans= running on the spot. We particularly enjoyed pretending to be French beans and calling out “Oooh la la” 🇫🇷😄

After our warm up, we played a game of pirate’s treasure where we pretend the coloured balls are gems and we have to take them from treasure island and put them in to the corresponding coloured treasure chest.

Then we played a colours game where the children run around and, when I shout a colour, they have to pick up the coloured ball as fast as they can.

After this we went completely off script as the children decided they would like to make up their own games. Here are the games we have now added to our repertoire;

Ball tig – the children run around holding the ball and when the chaser tigs you, you have to drop your ball and can’t move until a friend returns the ball to your hand.

Freeze and go- holding up the green ball means you can run around, holding up the blue ball means you have to freeze

Throw and go- holding up the green ball means you can run around and holding up the pink ball means you have to pick up a ball and throw it up to the sky.


A great fun morning with brilliant team work and creativity from the children. Well done guys!

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Holiday Tales and Shells

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The children have been returning to nursery after their holidays with lovely stories to tell us. Some of the children have also brought us shells which we have used for some creative crafts.

One of the children decided to make her own beach for her shells. First, she cut the wood and then separated her beach area, making one for water and another for sand and shells.

She then told us that she had been at the beach and had gone swimming in the water. Great story telling and creativity!

We have also been making our own shell and beach pictures including a lovely mermaid.

Whilst this activity is great fun, the children are also developing their fine motor skills , creativity and imagination as well as developing language and social skills when taking turns and discussing their pictures.

Today we used the shells to make a wind chime adding some beads to make different sounds.

We searched for shells that had holes in them or we made holes in them carefully using a nail and hammer, we had to be very careful to tap gently so that the shells did not break or crack.

We then threaded them onto the string, which was a bit tricky, before adding the beads. We now have a beautiful wind chime hanging in our garden. If you are walking past, why don’t you listen out for it on a breezy day.

Thank you for your summer themed donations and all your holiday stories, please keep them coming.

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Amazing Architecture in Cart Mill City

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Over the last few weeks, we have spent lots of time in our construction and block play area. We are so lucky to have a large selection of block play and construction materials to choose from here at Cart Mill. This gives us the opportunity to explore our creativity through designing and building our own models.

Using one of our house plans as a guide, we chose various sizes of wooden blocks to recreate our own houses! Using our knowledge of shapes, positional language and by working together, we created a living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom!  By adding loose parts, we were able to add some extra special features!

“There’s a kitchen. This is the living room. We’re going to make a dining room”.
“The kitchen is next to the living room.  The bathroom is behind the kitchen.”
“It’s got 2 toilets”.
“These are the statues. My mummy has statues in the bathroom”.
“It has a chimney. Steam comes out of it and the bad guys can’t come in!”  “This is my bedroom.  I’m putting a cushion in to lie on”.

Using smaller blocks gives us the opportunity to develop both our fine motor and problem solving skills by discovering how to connect the blocks together to build our models.

We all love playing with our stickle bricks and Lego.  Sometimes it can be really tricky to fit the blocks together. With a bit of patience, perseverance and using our fantastic imaginations, we have created some fantastic models!

“It’s a birthday cake with candles on it”.
”It’s a T”.

“I made a play park.  It has a climbing frame, a slide and a swimming pool”.

Working together and sharing our ideas, we were able to create our very own Cart Mill Lego city! Isn’t it fabulous! We think we would have lots of fun living there!  Can you recognise the special people who live there?

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“The swimming pool looks like so much fun. It has a bit to jump off into the water and you go up the stairs and through the door to get to the slide.  It’s got a cafe if we are hungry!”.

To challenge ourselves further, we decided to take our block building  outside! It was so much fun! Working together, we placed the blocks carefully in front and behind each other to create a path all round the Cart  Mill garden! It was sooooo big and meant we were able to walk all round the garden without our feet touching the ground (the floor is lava after all!).

 

 

 

 

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Kandinsky kids

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We have been learning about different styles of art while developing our gross motor mark making skills and this morning we have been looking at the work of the artist Kandinsky. We discussed how the circles could have been created and the different colours he used. We noticed each adjacent circle was a different colour. Then we started creating our own using the mini mops and a selection of colours.


“It’s like a rainbow Easter egg!”


“It looks like a tornado. You’re going to get sucked in to it!”

Then we decided to try a different method and use brushes to make smaller circles.


“Look at all my spirals.”

Absolutely amazing pieces of art created and some good messy fun!

Outdoor Learning, Trips and Outings

Wednesdays are for Wild Raspberry picking 😃

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Today at Cart Mill family centre the children discovered wild raspberries on their nature walk. They talked about what other fruits grow wild in Scotland” I found strawberries when I was on holiday , they were really sweet” “ I like finding brambles on a walk they are big  purple and juicy ”  They collected the raspberries  and decided  to make them into yummy muffins.

The children looked up a muffin recipe in a baking book and decided what ingredients they would need. “We need flour sugar milk and baking powder to make them rise” “let’s wash our raspberries so they are clean ““We will need scales to weigh out our ingredients “ “ The children were able to name and weigh out their ingredients waiting patiently on their turn.

“ I need 150 grams of flour” It’s not sticky enough you need more milk” “ I need to put in two tablespoons of sugar “


The children used lots of descriptive language whilst making their muffins.  They are looking forward to tasting them at home , well done everyone.

 

Outdoor Learning, Snack

Let’s go for a walk ……..

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Today we decided to go for a walk.  Let’s go across the road (watch out for  the cars and bikes). Along the stoney path , through the woods and then the gate , remember to close the gate so any animals can’t get out ! . What can we hear “water we must be near the river..

We have spotted lots of nature on the way we have seen a ladybird on a leaf 🍃 and lots of different types of flowers 🌸 watch out for the jaggy ones!

We even saw some raspberries growing on a bush. Look at those dark clouds “they might be full of rain”.

Then we found the river . It’s time for a little snack of Juicy apples 🍏 . We then took it in turn to go carefully down to the river and get to throw our stones in. Each stone makes a different sound wow mine went plop !

On our way back to nursery we went on a stick hunt we wanted to collect sticks, pine cones, flowers and long pieces of grass some were even taller than us !!. We can put them in our nursery garden and let all the children see what we have found.

We all agreed we had a lovely walk in the outdoors . We explored, worked together ,listened to each other learned lots of new information and also had great fun.

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Introducing Cart Mill’s butterfly family 🐛🦋

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On the 1st of June our caterpillars arrived at the centre and we have been doing a great job of helping to care for them each day since. We started by investigating the caterpillars 🐛 we watched how they wiggled when they walked and counted how many feet they have; can you believe they have fourteen?!
We watched as they ate their food and got bigger and bigger. They have to shed their exoskeleton in order to grow and we got to feel it, it was very fluffy! Then when we came back after the weekend they had formed their chrysalides! We learned that butterflies come from a chrysalis and it is moths that come from a cocoon.

“They’re so hairy.” “I have caterpillars in my garden.” “Argh, they’re wobbling!”

The chrysalides shook as we transferred them to the butterfly net and we found out that they do this to scare off predators. Next we had to prepare for the butterflies emerging.

“I think they like the nectar.”

When the first butterfly came out from his chrysalis we prepared sugar water for him to drink and put it on some flowers. We also cut juicy oranges and placed them in the net. We learned that butterflies use their feet to taste their food and their mouth is like a curly straw; they unfurl it to drink and then curl it back up again when finished. We now have five butterflies and we have named them Ozar, Mo, Flutter, Anna and Ruby.

“It goes round and round and round.” “I’m colouring my butterfly’s wings.”

After watching the process of the caterpillars changing to butterflies, we were inspired to create our own version of the lifecycle.

Then this morning it was time to let them go….

We started by putting sugar water and oranges on the butterfly table we had previously made with Lauren. Then we opened the butterfly net and waited. And waited 😆 The butterflies were a little hesitant to come out but when they made an appearance they wanted to get up close and personal. One of them landed on the jacket to get a quick cuddle before flying off and the other let us have a turn of holding him.

 

Outdoor Learning

Sports Super Stars!

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This week the children have been enjoying sports week. We have been participating in many different sports activities both in the garden and out on the grass! Thankfully the weather has been kind to us so far! The children have been showing their competitive sides and throwing themselves into the races!

One of their favourite races has definitely been the sack race! We are so impressed at how good the children have been at this showing off their fantastic balance and coordination skills!

The egg and spoon race (using bean bags) was great fun,  Some of the children managed the whole race without dropping it, especially the ones that were holding it on!!!  We also ran balancing the bean bags on our heads! This was tricky but the children showed great perseverance to get to the end!

Throwing the rings on to the cones proved to be very popular! The children enjoyed this game and really tried their best to get all the rings over!

We have some really good jumpers at Cart Mill so the long jump was very successful. The children ran up to the rope and jumped as far as they could landing on two feet! The action photos show how much fun this was!

The good old running race is definitely still a favourite! The children just love to run anywhere and everywhere! We had races in the garden and out on the grass and the children particularly enjoyed running down the hill!

Sports fun will continue for the rest of this week. I think we may have some future Olympians or maybe the next Usain Bolt here at Cart Mill!

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Exploring Wood

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We have been making lots of lovely creations at our woodwork bench which got us wondering, where does the wood come from? We knew the answer would be found online, we asked the question and it took us to a short film we could watch describing how wood comes from the trees.

We had a look round the room to discover what we had that was made from wood.  We found chairs, storage cupboards, construction blocks, a toy toaster from the home corner.
“We have a lot of wood in here”.

We then took our search out doors into the garden which was full of different pieces of wood lots of different sizes, textures and shapes. We have sections of tree trunks in our garden so we could see the whole trunk of the tree. We could see the bit right in the middle, called the pith. Then we could see lots of rings and finally we could see the bark on the outside of the trunk. When you remove the bark, the wood changes colour underneath. “Some of the bark just falls off in the forests 🌳 I see it when I go to the woods”

We then moved back to our woodwork area and chose some materials and fun resources to make a new wooden creation. We all worked together and discussed what we would like to add to our work of art.  The children talked about the sizes and textures of the materials they were using to make their models. These included a cat house, planes, chairs and beds for their dolls. All the while this was helping develop their fine motor skills plus hand and eye co ordination. The children’s skills and imaginations plus creativity are amazing, watching what they create each day is lovely.  We would love to receive any pieces of wood or bark you might find when out and about.