Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Creating The Cart Mill Scarecrow!

March 28, 2024 Mr Edwards Leave a comment

In our garden adventures on Wednesday, we dove into the beloved story of “The Scarecrows Wedding” by Julia Donaldson. Inspired by the tale, one of our little minds proposed an exciting idea – let’s make our own scarecrow to protect our plants from hungry birds!

”The birds like to eat fruit so they maybe will eat our seeds”

Excitement bubbled as we brainstormed what we’d need, just like in the story we got to work and wrote some lists. These included:

Straw
Clothes
Hat
Scarf
Head
Legs
Face

With our list in hand, we turned to the internet for guidance. Click the link to try building a scarecrow at home. How to build a scarecrow

Today was the big day! We gathered our supplies and got busy.

First, we stuffed some old clothes with straw to make our scarecrow’s body. We made sure everything was nice and secure.

Next came the fun part – creating the face! We discussed facial features together and gave it some eyes, a nose and a big friendly smile. We also gave it some lovely Cart Mill branding.

Once the body and face were ready, we used sticks from our willow tree to give our scarecrow a strong frame. Then, we proudly placed it in the garden to stand guard over our precious veggies.

As we admired our handiwork, one question remained: What should we name our new friend? Suggestions flew around, each more imaginative than the last. It came to a vote and we decided on Harry!

With our scarecrow watching over the garden, we wrapped up another day of fun and learning in our outdoor classroom. 😀

Article 13 (freedom of expression)

Article 31 (leisure, play and culture)

Article 28 (right to education)

Outdoor Learning

The Bug Collectors

March 25, 2024 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

The children have noticed that when it is raining we find more worms in the garden. Today we decided to go on a bug hunt to discover what other bugs live in our garden. We started by reading the story of The Bug Collector.

We talked about all the different bugs in the story and which ones we though we might find today. The children also shared stories of their own bug hunts..

“I have a frog in my garden and one time a bee landed on my nose.”

“I saw a frog in the fountain at Greenbank Gardens.”

Next we got our magnifying glasses and our bug catchers and set off round the garden. The children said we need to look under things because the bugs like living underground. Look at all the worms we found…

We decided to move them somewhere safe so “the birds can’t get them.”

Then we discovered lots of spider webs but we didn’t see any spiders! We thought they must be hiding from the rain so we decided to make our own. We looked at the story of ‘Aargh Spider’ to see what the webs and the spiders look like then created some beautiful bug artwork…

“I made a bed for my spider to sleep in.”

What can you find in your garden? Please share with us @cartmillcentre

Article 13- Every child must be free to express their
thoughts and opinions and to access all
kinds of information.

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Perfectly Patterned Pictures

March 18, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

We have really enjoyed making patterns in our gross motor art area. We have investigated making marks with a variety of resources. We’ve used plungers to make circle prints.

We have used a selection of different types and sizes of brushes to see what marks and patterns we can create with them, such as large paint bushes, rollers, sweeping brushes and scrubbing brushes.

After we used our tyres to make large patterns we wondered what we could use next?

Luckily we got a special delivery. A new gross motor art tool to help us further develop our gross motor art skills.
We got brand new large pattern rollers. We couldn’t wait to get a turn of them and try them out.
First we tried putting a large sheet of paper down to see what marks we could make.

We enjoyed rolling the large rollers in the paint then pushing them over the paper, but it soon got filled up and we couldn’t see which patterns we had made. We decided to make it even more fun by taking the paper away. To have a larger area to explore our patterns and progress our skills even more.

By using the ground as our canvas, we could go further, see our marks more clearly and change direction.

We needed lots of paint to extend our marks, we rolled our roller in the paint and set off.

On one roller we had stripes.

And on the other we had spots.

We created a wonderful pattern picture in our gross motor art area for every one to admire.

We all were engaged and enjoyed this experience. Everyone was keen to have a turn. We were able to wait our turn and share.

Now that we have investigated patterns in our gross motor art area next we will be looking at “Street Art.” We have added some pictures of local murals that are around Glasgow to inspire our children to create their own.

I wonder what Street Art we will be creating next?

Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Goldilocks and the three bears 👩‍🦳🐻🐻🐻

March 4, 2024 Mrs MacRae Leave a comment

Today in the garden we invited the children to read and retell the story of Goldilocks and the three bears.

“We’re going out on a walk to the woods”

“Mummy bears bowl of porridge”

“Someone been eating my porridge and they have eaten it all up”

We provided the children with some puppets and props to explore the story. The children have been using role play to act out the characters from the familiar story recalling the main events.

“This one’s just right”

“Now the porridge is to cold”

Some children found some ice in the garden and stared to collect it in the bowl and started playing around with changing the story.

Story telling has so many learning opportunities for our children, it’s great to tell these stories in a way that captures the interests of our individual children.

World Book Day coming up on the 7th March. What book will you read?

Article 15 – You have the right to choose your own friends and join in groups

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Terrific tyre treads and painty patterns in the puddles

February 27, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

In our gross motor art area in the garden we have been exploring art on a large scale. So far we have used large brushes, mops, spray bottles and plungers. Today however we decided to make our art even bigger.

We decided to use the tyres to roll in the paint and see the patterns it made. We popped on our wellies and puddlesuits due to the rain showers we had this morning, and got to work creating our massive masterpiece.

It was interesting to see the different patterns the tyre made depending on where it rolled.

We had long tread marks and circles prints where it landed.

Because of the rain our patterns washed away quickly so we just had to make more.

It was a bit tricky at first to roll the tyre all the way across on our own ,we problem solved and thought, how about making it a team effort.

So we worked together to roll the tyres back and forward to each other. Team work made the art work!

We investigated who could push it the furthest and what kind of patterns did we make if we pushed it faster or slower.

We had so much fun with this large scale art outdoor experience. It was funny when the tyre splatted in the paint in the middle.

We tried different colours of powder paint to see which colours made the best pattern.

The rain got a little heavy at one point, but it mixed in with the powder paint and made our paint mix together and create much more paint puddles to roll our tyre into.

This was a great experience for our children of all ages to expand and inspire their creative designs, while also developing their gross motor skills.

We had our gross motor art tools beside us incase any one wanted to choose a different way to create art, but the tyre was the winner today.

Outdoor Learning

Gladiators Ready 💪

February 23, 2024 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

The children have been talking about watching gladiators in nursery with some very enthusiastic chat about which gladiator is their favourite. Viper is definitely not popular; “He breaks all the rules!”

We decided to create our very own Eliminator course in the garden….

The children are encouraged at each stage to assess their own risk and make sure they feel safe taking part. They were given three options and it is up to them to take the option the they are most comfortable with.

Many of the children started on the lower beam but as they gained confidence progressed to the high beam and were really proud of their achievement!

Some of the children decided to play a round of power ball. This is the game where the contenders have to get past the gladiators to put the ball in the basket. The children were great at taking turns of being the contender or the gladiator, brilliant cooperative play!

“Contenders, ready? Gladiators ready? 3,2,1, go!”

“I’m going to be Giant.” “I’m going to be Nitro.”

Who is your favourite gladiator?

UNCRC Article 31- You have the right to play by doing things like sports and drama.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Play dough patterns and Creations

February 20, 2024 Miss Keith Leave a comment

This week at the play dough area we are looking at patterns we can make in the play dough using resources and natural materials. As always our children can confidently make their play dough.

The girls and boys then chose which resources they would like to use. We picked lovely patterned rolling pines, some leaves and sticks .

The boys and girls had to use all their muscles to pull off the leaves 🍃 and the break up some sticks . We made sure there was no jaggy edges on the sticks that might hurt us.

We then began to use our rolling pins across the leaves so that we could see the print it left in the play dough. We learnt that the harder your roll the better the print.

As we have very creative children the children started to explore what else they could do. Look my tree stands up high . Some of the children could demonstrate problem solving techniques and perseverance. “ Look I made my tree stand up using more play dough at the bottom “.

The girls and boys worked well together helping each other make their prints and admiring each other’s work.

We had great fun making prints with the leaves and rolling pin . We made holes with the sticks and of course we made chicken wraps,pancakes,plants, jack and the beanstalk.
We look forward to discovering what else we can make patterns with in our play dough.

Article – I have the right to explore my strengths and creativity .

Outdoor Learning, Technologies

Splish Splash 💦

February 20, 2024 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

Today we have been using what nature gives us for our outdoor play, we have been splashing in muddy puddles.

The children wanted to measure how high they could jump so we decided to bring some digital learning into our outdoor play to facilitate this. We used a slow motion video and then watched them back on the big screen so we could measure the size of the splashes.

“My splash is bigger then me!”

We paused the video when the splash was at its highest then the children took turns of standing next to the board to discover if it was bigger or smaller than them. The first one we looked at was bigger than all the children and came all the way up to my shoulders.

Another one was the same height as one of the boys on his top toes.

This experience has allowed us to use lots of comparative language, to measure using non standard units and best of all to have fun in the rain. There’s no such thing as bad weather at Cart Mill 🌧😄

UNCRC Article 29- education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Natures Canvas

February 12, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

Today in our gross motor art area, we used the translucent board to paint on. Before we started we got some powder paint mixed with water. We chose colours that represented nature. Green for the grass and trees, blue for the sky and orange for the sunsets.
We decided to use large pots today to make it a little different learning experience than indoor art. We wanted to extend our gross motor art and take our skills we learned in our studio painting area into a larger creative environment outdoors.

Inside our pots we had a selection of gross motor art utensils to select from. We had mops, rollers and large paint bushes.

When we were making our creations we talked about what we could see in the outdoor environment and what was the inspiration for our art.

We each took a turn of painting and sometimes we worked along side our peers to create collaborative art.

We used our gross motor skills as we had to bend and stretch to dip the large brushes/rollers into the tubs and use our arms/hands to help us control where we put the paint while using the large brushes.

Once we had got the hang of our gross motor art painting we decided we wanted an even bigger space, so we used the nursery garden as our “natures canvas”. It looked nice and bright with all the colours we used.

This is a great experience for our children to let there creativity take over with a large space and freedom to design. It is a learning experience that can be easily adapted to differentiate the learning between our 2-3 year olds and our 3-5year olds while simultaneously having fun along side each other with our older children role modelling for our younger ones.

I wonder where our creative gross motor art journey will take us tomorrow. Feel free to have a look at our floor book next time you are in to see what we have been learning in our outdoor art area.

Article 29 – “you have the right to education which tries to develop your personality and abilities as much as possible and encourages you to respect other peoples rights and values and to respect the environment.” (UNCRC)