Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Learning

Blue days are good days!

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We are so lucky at Cart Mill to have Blue as part of our team. Blue has visited the centre since she was a tiny puppy and the children love to see her when she visits. It has been such a pleasure to watch her grow and to give children the opportunity to care for her.


The children benefit so much from having contact with animals. Caring for pets is an enriching experience for children which offers opportunities to experience nurture, relationships and nature. Froebel noted that ‘The child who has cared for another living thing… is more easily led to care for his own life’ (Froebel in Lilley, 1967:128).


The children benefit from outdoor exercise as they accompany her on her walks and understand there are responsibilities from owning a pet.

We love having Blue days in our centre!

Outdoor Learning

Come and visit our toddler den 🛖

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Welcome to our toddler den, a place where we can investigate, explore, shelter and use lots of natural open ended resources in our play

Our small world is a particular favourite.

Look who came to visit our den today……Bookbug!!! The children were so pleased to see him and sing some songs and share stories.

We all enjoyed singing Incy Wincy Spider, Gail is a little nervous of the real ones 🕷😳

The children love to be outside and in our den it feels like we’re inside when we’re out!

Outdoor Learning

Reused and Recycled🎃

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Today in the toddlers we wondered what we could do with our leftover pumpkins?


We split the pumpkins into halves…..what could we be using them for???


We scooped out the seeds

We added some water to the shells

We added some seeds to the shells…

We put them on the shelf, who could they be for??

We waited very patiently…….

Yay the birds came to visit, so we used something that was going to be thrown out for another us – well done tods👏👏👏👏👏👏

 

 

Outdoor Learning

Water mixtures!

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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 🌱🌿🍂🍁

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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

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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!

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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!!!🥕🥕🥕

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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

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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

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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?