Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Learning

Water mixtures!

Leave a comment

Today in the garden the children had great fun at the water area! They used the hose to fill up bottles and jugs! They each added a different colour of food colouring to their water using pipettes to see what happened! This helps to develop their fine motor skills.

“The water is all blue!”

”My water has all orange swirls!”

The children thought it would be fun to mix colours together! They added the blue food colouring to the orange water!
”Its turned green!!!”

The blue food colouring was added to the red! “It’s made purple!!!”

The children then just had fun pouring all the  different coloured water into different jugs and tubs and finding out what colours they could make!
“They all make brown!!”

What amazing colour mixing and colour recognition!

Outdoor Learning

We’re going on an autumn hunt 🌱🌿🍂🍁

Leave a comment

The toddlers decided to go for a walk and to keep ourselves safe we had a chat about our safety rules, holding hands and listening to the adults. As we were crossing a road, we had to be extra careful to look and listen at the side of the road.

On our walk we had to look up, down and all around. We looked at all the autumn colours of the leaves and we collected the leaves that had fallen on the ground in our special bags. We listened to the birds and saw a squirrel but it was too fast for us to take a photo 😁

After we collected our leaves we played hide and seek, had some races and saw a most interesting van that came off its back wheels and stretched nearly to the moon 😳

We then brought all our autumn goodies back to nursery where the children enjoyed decorating their autumn bags with their leaves. Some chose to paint and we shared them with our friends who may not have been able to come on our walk. We transferred our leaves to the playdough where the children were leaf printing.

Autumn is here and is providing glorious colours, textures, temperatures for us all to enjoy 😁

Outdoor Learning

Patterns in the sand

Leave a comment

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. “

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Let’s get Creative!

Leave a comment

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?

Outdoor Learning, Snack

From earth to table snack today!!!🥕🥕🥕

Leave a comment


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. 😀

 

 

Outdoor Learning

Bubbles bubbles and more bubbles

Leave a comment

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.


 

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Transient Art

Leave a comment

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?

Outdoor Learning

Toddlers and Water 💦

Leave a comment

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.

Outdoor Learning

Cart Mill Mini Olympic Games

Leave a comment

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.

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Ice cream parlour🍦

Leave a comment

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:

  • Shaving foam
  • Food Colouring
  • Chocolate powder
  • Sprinkles


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.