Today in the garden the children had great fun using our giant polydron pieces.
They checked out some pictures for inspiration before drawing up their own plans.
The children worked really well as a team to create various designs, developing their problem solving skills and communicating their ideas.
“we made a train, all aboard “
“look at our house”
The possibilities are endless and through polydron activities it will help them to grow and develop to their full potential.
One of our children was telling us about the amazing fun they had ten pin bowling with their family! They were so excited to have won the game and wanted to share their story! We decided to make our own bowling game for the garden which the children were very excited about! First we put some water in bottles to stop the bottles blowing over in the wind! The children chose different colours of food colouring to make the bottles brighter!
We gave the bottles a good shake to mix the colours!
”They are rainbow bottles!”
The children then set the bottles out like skittles in a bowling alley!
”They are in a triangle!”
We then had great fun throwing different sized balls at the bottles to see how many we could knock down! The children noticed that the bigger balls hit over more skittles!
“It’s a strike to hit them all, I play it on my Nintendo Wii!”
The children showed off their bowling knowledge! Some have been ten pin bowling and others have played it at home!
The children kept a record on the wall using chalk of the number of bottles they knocked over using tally marks. They had so much fun whilst developing their gross motor and numeracy skills! I think Cart Mill has some future bowlers amongst us!
This morning in the garden we have been working on our balancing skills. We used loose parts to create our Muddy Movers course which helps us strengthen and improve our gross motor skills. We are becoming very confident in our balancing skills, so we decided it was time to make the course a little more challenging! We had a look in our cupboard and found some bean bags and some egg and spoons! We decided to challenge ourselves and see if we could balance the beanbags on our heads and the egg on the spoon as we walked around the course.
We started by discussing what it means to be balanced;
“It means you don’t wobble.”
“You need to practice.”
”You put your hands out to help.”
The course is designed in a way that helps us to assess our own risk and abilities.
We like to use our loose parts to make changes to our course every day. We can choose to walk along the plank on the ground or if we are feeling confident, we can step up and walk along the bridge.
By keeping a beanbag on our heads, this encourages us to keep our heads up, or the beanbag will fall off! This helps us improve our balancing skills.
We had to walk really carefully to make sure the egg didn’t fall off the spoon!
We demonstrated excellent balancing today! We were getting faster and more confident each time we competed the course.
We had so much fun!
We were so excited to see so much snow in our Cart Mill garden today. We had so much fun investigating how deep it was and how it felt to touch. We even made a Snow Angel! 
“It’s cold. I’m picking it up and making a snowball.”
We are so lucky to have a large open space next to our garden with lots of hills which are perfect for sledging!
“I was going so fast”.
We had so much fun racing down the hill to see who could go the fastest! Sami joined in too but we reached the bottom before she did!
Next it was off to the Spider Park. We decided to call it the Snow Park today!
We had so much fun playing snow tig and making snowballs!
We demonstrated excellent teamwork by pulling each other on the sledge round the Snow Park. It was hard work!
Of course we have to make a Snowman on a snowy day! We worked together to roll our large snowballs and found some sticks to use as arms. We made a big snowman and a little snowman.
“This is his head” ” He has arms.”
After all our hard work it was time for snack. Of course we had to have some hot chocolate to warm us up!
We had snow much fun today!
It may have been freezing rain, intermittent hail stones and blowing a hoolie but the children at Cart Mill weren’t going to let that stop them playing outdoors!
We started by having a chat about how to keep warm while playing outdoors and discussed what games we would like to play. The children asked to play banana tig and toilet tig.
If the tigger catches you in banana tig you have to put your hands above your head like a banana skin and you cannot move until a friend ‘peels’ the banana.
If the tigger catches you during toilet tig you have to stand with your arm out and cannot move until a friend ‘ flushes’ the toilet.
These types of games encourage turn taking and co-operation between the children.
The children then asked to play hide and seek and got very creative with their hiding places!
We had a great time keeping ourselves active during Storm Dudley.
Today we had a very interesting nature walk! Our mission was to collect leaves and acorns of all different shapes and sizes.
However, the first thing we spotted on our walk was was two little ducks! We thought this was very exciting as they were running around so close to our nursery!
The children noticed the ducks were different colours and spotted a duck pond for them! (A very large puddle!!)
“They are shouting quack, quack!” “They are so cute!”
“I love the ducks!” “They came to our nursery!”
We continued on our walk and the children managed to find lots of leaves and pine cones. They found both green leaves and brown leaves. They climbed small hills to reach the leaves they wanted.
When we were walking back to nursery the children spotted a big muddy puddle which, of course, they just had to jump in!! They had so much fun seeing how high they could jump and how big a splash they could make!
”I made a great big splash!” “The water feels so cold on me!”
Once we got back to nursery we did some printing with our leaves using different coloured paint. The children noticed that the different leaves made different patterns on the paper! We also dipped our pine cones in paint and rolled them across the paper to create some nice patterns.
Whilst making some amazing pictures with the materials we gathered, the children were developing their gross motor skills and had great conversations about their outing! What a fun morning we had!
Blue came in for a visit today, we were so pleased to see her. She was eager to go for a walk and the children were keen to walk her! We looked out of the window to check the weather and decided it would be best to wear our wellies and puddle suits.
We all headed off down a muddy hill. We had to practice patience, turn taking and being responsible when holding on to Blues lead.
We had great fun splashing through lots of puddles before going through the kissing gate one at a time.
It was so cold this morning that one of the puddles had a thin covering of ice which was fun to break and cold to touch.
“it’s like the North Pole “
the children noticed the sound of the “noisy” river “ it’s because there is much water”.
As we walked on, we noticed mounds of soil. After close inspection it was decided that they were mole hills. “Look this one looks like a baby one, it’s so cute”.
Walking Blue is so much fun, but splashing though puddles is the best!
Today at Cart Mil we have been celebrating Lunar New Year 2022 by participating in various activities both indoors and outdoors! 2022 is the year of the tiger. We discussed the features of a tiger then decided to look for stripes while out for a walk. Look at all the stripes we found….
We also enjoyed having a race through the woods and a play in the spider park on the way back to nursery.
For snack today we sampled different foods that might be eaten during Lunar New Year celebrations.
We enjoyed tasting noodles, rice and lychees!
In the Home room we decided to make our own fortune cookies which were delicious!
We decided to make our playdough the same colours as a tiger and had lots of fun creating our own Lunar New Year tigers!
In the Discovery room we used our interactive board to research the history of Lunar New Year.
We used our creativity and imagination in the Studio today to make celebration ribbons and streamers. We then used them to recreate our own Lunar New Year celebration dance.
We have had so much fun celebrating and learning the history of Lunar New Year.
Kung Hey Fat Choi!
We have decided to create a sensory area in our garden. We made a list of all natural resources that we could collect when on our local walk. We all helped to collect stones, sticks, leaves and pinecones.
“
“I found a big stone, let’s put it in the bag.”
Once back from our walk we made labels so that we could sort the loose parts into a section each.
The children then had fun working together to match and sort.
“We’re almost finished.”
”We need to collect more stones.”
Our sensory area is beginning to take shape and we have lots of great ideas for different natural resources we could collect to add to it.
This morning the boys and girls have taken part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2022. We started by trying to invite the birds in to the garden. Helen and the children discussed what birds might use to create their nests and filled the whisks with a variety of these items and also some seeds.
We looked at pictures of the most common garden birds and learned the names of them and also some of their features. Then we created a chart to record which birds we saw and how many of each type.
We used the binoculars to look for birds and then marked which ones we saw on the chart.
The children even drew pictures of their favourite birds. Look at this lovely starling!
The Big Garden Birdwatch runs from the 28-30th January, you can find more details on the RSPB website. Why not take part and share your findings with us on Twitter. Have a nice weekend 🦜
