This morning we have been creating patterns in the sand trays. The children have used the pattern stones to print a pattern and have also been using sticks or their fingers to trace the pattern. Some of the children even started creating their own. We have enjoyed discussing the different shapes within the patterns and what we think they look like.
“They’re squares.”
“It’s a 1, 1, 1, 1.”
“It’s my name.”
“I think it’s curly.”
“I’ve got stripes. “
At Cart Mill we love to explore our creativity in many ways.
We explored with paints on the ground and logs creating different patterns and pictures.
Then we mixed the paint to create our own colours and painted our hands!
Rainbow puddles! Using chalk and water we made lovely rainbows 🌈
When we finished painting we got the hose and scrubbing brushes to clean up the logs and the rain helped wash the rest away.
During this the children learned different ways to be creative, explored making their own colours and becoming more confident in their mark making skills.
How do you be creative?
The toddlers have been growing vegetables in our garden. We have been watering them regularly and today we were able to harvest them! We enjoyed some delicious toddler grown snacks including carrots and spring onion, with a potato to take home for later.
We firstly picked our carrots, spring onions and potatoes.
Then we washed the soil off.
Finally after working so hard today, we enjoyed tasting our Cart Mill grown vegetables at snack time.
The children have been learning where our food comes from and it was nice to be able to learn and share together. 😀
At Cart Mill we have been having lots of fun with bubbles.
“How do you make giant bubbles”
Some of the children wanted to make giant bubbles. So we decided to experiment to see what we could use to make giant bubbles.
“how about that hola hoop?”
We mixed some water and washing up liquid and used our hola hoop, but our bubbles just kept popping.
“I think we are going to have to look up a special recipe.”
We used the internet to find a recipe to make giant bubbles. We also watched some video’s of The amazing bubble man. The children were fascinated with the bubble tricks Louis Pearl created.
We made up our recipe and started experimenting trying out different techniques to creating some amazing bubbles.
This week the children in the Home Room have been creating their own fabulous pictures with transient art.
‘Transient art is simply moveable art’. The children are getting creative using loose parts such as stones, shells, buttons etc, to create pictures using their imagination.
Transient art allows children to make a picture 100 different ways, rather than having 1 end product when gluing and sticking.
The children added blue playdough to their pictures and pretended they were at the seaside and the playdough was the sea.
“Look at the waves in the sea, they are very big”
They even made 3D pictures. “Look the bird is sticking out of the picture”
This experience can be explored indoors and outdoors and can often lead from collecting sticks, stones, leaves etc. when out a local walk.
The children had lots of fun creating their own pictures, why dont you have a turn at home, when at the park or out a walk?
Today the toddler children have been investigating the different ways we can use water. We learnt that some items will float in water and some will sink. “Look the bin lorry sinks”. We found stones and shells in the garden and they didn’t float. The children came to realise that if the object was heavy it would sink to the bottom. We found ducks and they liked to float on the water, this made the children think about what else maybe lives in water we looked around our garden and discovered some fish, frogs, sharks and dolphins, that all like to be in or around water.
When we finished, we talked about what to do with the water with a little help we discussed how to recycle the water and give all our growing vegetables in the garden a drink. The children searched the garden and came back with their chosen containers to carry the water. We practised some great pouring, measuring and balancing skills to transport the water to the vegetables. Well done tods.
The children have been busy in our garden developing their gross motor skills.
The children were able to follow the instructions on the ground to develop their co ordination and balance, Hopping like a bunny and hopping on one leg like a flamingo
Once the children got the hang of this. They decided they wanted to add their own ideas.
“Let’s add some star jumps”
The children worked collaboratively using their imagination to come up with some great ideas to add.
“Let’s add a dancing box”. “Can we stomp like a dinosaur”. “We need a shouting box”
We even added a love box at the end to and hug a friend and celebrate friendship.
The children had great fun using their own thoughts and ideas in this game. I’m sure we will be re visiting this again and come up with more fantastic ideas.
What a beautiful day it is🌞
After discussions last week on how to keep cool in the sun, the children decided they wanted to open their own ice cream parlour.
we used:
The children used different sized spoons and bowls to mix the foam and chocolate power to make chocolate ice cream. They then mixed red food colouring to make strawberry ice cream.
“We need to add more chocolate powder, I cant smell it properly”
“I’m going to have a pink cone”
”I’m scooping the ice cream, it’s very slippy”
” I made a unicorn Ice cream, it’s gooey”
We made our ice cream cones in the shade while we had a break from the sun.
The children used their senses to smell and touch the foam with their hands.
They used their counting skills to count how many scoops of ice cream it took to fill the cone.
There were some very excited children in the centre today. As it was cold and frosty we thought it would be a good idea to light the fire and sing some Christmas songs around it, while drinking delicious hot chocolate.
We hope all the Cart Mill family have a wonderful and safe festive period.
Merry Christmas, and a very happy New Year from us all.
Thank you to all for the most generous gifts you have handed in for the staff, it is very much appreciated.
Our children have had lots of lovely stories to share with us of decorating their Christmas trees at home with their families. They decided that as we have our very own Cart Mill Christmas tree growing in our garden, we should decorate it!
After much discussion, we decided that we would make our decorations a little different using some of the beautiful pine cones that were kindly dontated to us. Of course at Cart Mill we do love a little bit of sparkle, so out came the glue and glitter (sorry Michelle!)The children chose their own colour of glitter and ribbon and worked very hard to decorate their pine cones. We then had lots of fun hanging them on our tree. Doesn’t it look beautiful!
A few of our children chatted about the decorations they had outside our houses and some had “special things” on their front door. We had a look at some pictures and decided we would make our very own Cart Mill Christmas wreath. We had a look around our garden and decided we really needed to collect some “interesting things” to put on our wreath. The children remembered we had seen some leaves and pine cones at our Forest School site so we decided we would go foraging to see what we could find!
The children excitedly changed into their Forest School waterproofs and wellies and we set off, we were so lucky that Val and Blue decided to come with us! Our children had lots of fun foraging and found some beautiful confier foliage, ivy, rosehip and holly. This sparked lots of interesting discussion on how ivy grows up trees “to touch the sky” and that “holly is very jaggy so you have to be careful” and that “we must not eat berries we find in the forest” and ” we need to wash our hands when we get back” Great work boys and girls!
We were so excited to start making our wreath. We have been learning about patterns in nature and the children carefully examined all of our leaves and pine cones and spotted lots of different patterns such as “spirals”, “jaggy bits round the edges, they look like triangles” and that our leaves “have lots of different lines on them” you are so clever boys and girls!
We decided to “stick” our different leaves to some cardboard to make our wreath. The children correctly identified we should make our wreath in the shape of a circle. We decided this should be an adult job (with the children giving me some advice on how I should hold my scissors and that I should be careful). We decided to try and stick our leaves with some glue. We were able to glue on our smaller leaves but we needed to do a bit of problem solving as our conifer foliage was “too heavy and keeps falling off”. We decided we should try to staple on our leaves. We decided this was an adult job and that the children could help by “squashing down Fiona’s hand to make them stick”. The children chose where to place our leaves and of course they decided we must have some extra special sparkle and a great big bow! We had so much fun and our wreath will look fabulous on our outdoor stage.
Finally, yes it has been a very creative week in our garden, we decided to make one last decoration. Paper chains! The children demonstarted excellent team work, sharing and fine motor skills in threading our strips of paper, glueing them together and making sure everyone had a turn. Our children were so clever to identify their own patterns by using different colours in sequence. We decided to see how long we could make our chain and to see if it would stretch all the way along our garden. Our children proudly held onto their chain and they counted that it was 28 children long! Amazing work boys and girls.
We would love you to share any Christmas decorations you have made at home with us.
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