Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Learning

Jump, Jump, Jump!

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In the garden, we have been developing the skill of jumping! Jumping requires power and balance and children can develop this skill by showing they can bend their knees when landing, having their head up looking straight forward and using their arms to balance if they need to.

The children have been demonstrating their jumping skills from a height over a low beam.

They then increased the difficulty and the height of the beam and assessed whether they felt safe or not and as their confidence grew, the children were encouraged to jump from a greater height.

The children were able to guide their learning and decide how high they were able to feel comfortable and felt safe to jump over.

Some children then decided to use their problem solving skills and different materials to create a seesaw with equipment from the obstacle course. The children have decided that the next steps they want to take is practicing balancing and jumping on one foot.

What ways can you develop your jumping and balancing skills at home? Feel free to share your learning with us via twitter @cartmillcentre and email at schoolmail@cartmill.e-renfrew.sch.uk

Article 31: every child has the right to play and take part in a wide range of activities.

Outdoor Learning

Pendulum Painting 🎨

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Today in the garden we have been having lots of fun creating very cool patterns using our gross motor skills and learning about the forces of motion and gravity with a painting technique called pendulum painting.

We started off by looking for resources with holes in them, once collected from around our nursery we started tying string onto the handles and hanging them from the rope. We filled them up with paint, pushing the pendulums watching the paint fall through the holes, each one creating a different pattern.

“This has lots of holes in it.”

”I’m choosing purple because it’s my favourite colour.”

We looked at the patterns made by the paint, we noticed that by swinging the pendulum harder or softer, in different directions and tying the string at different lengths it would create different patterns.

“My one is going super high”

“It’s like a swing.”

“I did a big push and it swings all by itself.”

The children enjoyed pushing the pendulums back and forth to one another and seeing how high they could push them. What a great excuse for some messy play!

Outdoor Learning

Fun at Forest School!

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We were so excited at Cart Mill today as it was our first day back at Forest School! It was time for us to put on our special Forest School suits and wellies and head off on our adventure!
It was so important to listen to Val and Fiona and we knew to “stop, listen and look for cars” before we crossed the road.

As we walked along the path, we could see and hear the river! Val told us it goes all the way past our Forest School and that it’s called the River Cart, “same as Cart Mill!”.

There are lots of hazards we need to look out for when we are at the Forest. We learned that hazards might be “dangerous if we touch them”. We spotted nettles, barred wire, an old fire pit and some glass, so we made sure we were very careful!

It was so “so exciting” to arrive at our site.  There was a huge mountain, so we decided to challenge ourselves to see if we could “race up to the top”. It was “a wee bit tricky”, but we were soon expert “mountain climbers!” The river looked so far away from the top and it was “so fun” to “run really fast” and “roly poly” back down.

Being a mountain climber is such hard work, so it was time for us to “have a wee rest” and a snack!

There was just enough time to explore the river before we headed back to Cart Mill for lunch!

It was difficult to decide what our favourite part of Forest School was today..

”I liked climbing the mountain”, “I like throwing stones in the river”, we ran really fast down the hill, it was fun”, “I liked everything”.

Phew, what a busy, fun, exciting first day in the Forest, “when can we come back!”

“The best classroom and the richest cupboard is roofed only by the sky” . (McMillan, 1925).

Article 31 – Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of activities.

Outdoor Learning

Exploring in the garden☘️🌱🌼

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Today we had lots of little helpers in the garden. The children have been helping to pull up some of the weeds in our planting area. There were some jaggy nettles growing in our garden. We quickly identify these and let the grown-ups get those ones, so they didn’t hurt our fingers.

“I’ve been stung by a nettle before it hurt.”

Using the gardening tools, we used our gross motor skills for digging, carrying and lifting the weeds.  We had to dig deep into the soil to get the roots of the weeds or the weeds would just start to grow back.

We discussed how the roots soak up all the water from the soil and that helps the plants to grow.

“A bit like you having a big drink of water.”

“Look at the size of this root, it’s been growing a long time”.

As we were digging, we came across some insects that live in the soil and mud, so we made sure that we were extra careful.

“Look! lots of spiders.”

“I’ve found a worm.”

We made up some rules to look after our worms.

  • We do not hurt the worms.
  • We pick them up very carefully.
  • We put them back into a safe place in the garden.

We love to spend time in the garden exploring and learning about our environment.

Article 29

You have the right to education which tries to develop your personality and abilities as much as possible and encourage you to respect other people’s rights and values and to respect the environment.

Outdoor Learning

🌻Sunflowers🌻

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Now the sun has appeared, it time to get planting our sunflower seeds

“what do we need to grow a sunflowers?”

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“soil is like food”

“water helps it grow”

“seeds”

“sunshine”

First we filled our pots with compost

“This is flower food”

“how long will it take to grow?

The children poked a small hole for the sunflower seed. Once the seed was in we covered it with a little soil.

“mine is going to be so tall. Can I take it home”

Now our seeds need a drink of water to help them grow.

“can I help water them”

Outdoor Learning

Different ways to move our bodies 🤸🏻 🏃‍♂️

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Today in the garden we had lots of fun moving our bodies in different ways and developing our gross motor skills! Gross motor skills are the skills which children develop using their whole body movements.

By increasing movements of their whole bodies, children become more flexible, confident and agile.

The children discovered a different way to cross the beam and move in and out the tyres… on their knees!!

R ” I can jump in and out the tyres”

M, R and P all practiced their balancing skills and demonstrated confidence when crossing the balancing beam on the obstacle course.. well done!!

Balancing helps children to understand concepts such as gravity and helps children to develop better concentration skills.

 

M demonstrated good use of her gross motor skills by balancing on the side of the tyres whilst crossing them. ”If I hold out my arms it helps me to balance”.

G showed confidence, strength and determination to climb up the climbing wall in the garden. She was able to use her hands to help her balance at the top whilst climbing onto the bars at the top with her knees. Well done G! Climbing plays a key role in early childhood gross motor skill development.

 

What ways can you develop your gross motor skills at home or out in the community? Share your pictures with us!

Article 6 : I have the right to live and grow. Article 31: I have a right to relax and play 

 

Outdoor Learning

Outdoors fun!

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This week in the garden, we have been thinking of ways to develop our physical area. We have been working as a team to come up with some suggestions to make it more challenging and interesting.

While doing this, we realised we could add some more things into our obstacle course to focus more on our balancing skills. We talked about what balancing is…

“You freeze, That helps you stay still”

“Put your arms out. That helps you not fall on your face.”

“I can balance like a statue, look!”

“I’m like a flamingo”

This sparked some conversation about being “statues” and how they don’t move because they can “balance”. Think about statues, can they move? Can the wind move a statue?

As the children were becoming more confident with their balancing skills, we explored more tricky ways to practice.

The children found many uses for the tyres in the garden, and ways we could incorporate them into our play to challenge ourselves physically using them.

“Look how super fast I can go”

“I can balance if I lift my feet up!”

“If I put these 2 in front, then that will stop it from toppling over. Look, it worked! I’m a giant!”

Great problem solving everybody!

The children also showed an interest in making their own little chalk obstacle courses too…

“I want to hop! That helps me balance”

“I’m going to do a zig zag. I want to run on it”

Then, to top off a super busy week of physical fun, we played musical statues!

I wonder what we could add into the garden next? Great work everybody!!

Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Gardening fun in the Greenhouse!

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The children at Cart Mill are very excited that we have entered the Pocket Garden Design Competition. They have been busy last week planting seeds and learning how to look after them. The children have remembered that, for the seeds to grow, they need watered regularly, especially after the weekend!

”The seeds are getting a drink of water!”

We were so delighted to see that some of our seeds had started to sprout already. “Look! I can see some green leaves!”

After watering our seeds we talked about the life cycle of plants again and I was super impressed with how much the children remembered. We also looked at a chart showing us some of the seeds and bulbs that will flower in Spring!

The children decided they wanted to plant more seeds which will hopefully grow in our nursery greenhouse. They looked at the chart and chose to plant some dwarf daffodil bulbs instead of seeds.

”I like them because they are pretty and yellow!”

As we opened the packet, we guessed what we thought they would look like!

”I think they will be rectangle!”

“I think they are soft and a circle shape!”

The children knew exactly what to do and set about planting the bulbs. First they filled the tray with some compost. Some of the children liked to use a trowel but some preferred to get stuck in with their hands!

One child remembered that we use our finger to make a hole in the soil to put the bulb in! They showed the rest how to do it! Then the bulbs got covered with compost and patted down with our hands!

We collected some water in our watering cans to give our new bulbs a drink.


We then put our new tray on the shelf in the greenhouse, beside all our other planters.

Finally we had to write on a lollipop stick so we could remember what bulbs we had planted in our tray!

We stuck the lollipop stick in and covered the new tray of buLbs!

”The cover will keep them warm at night!”

We are excited to keep watering all our seeds and bulbs and can’t wait to see them grow. Once they have grown enough we will be planting them in our own pocket garden, designed by the children.

Article 28
You have the right to education

Outdoor Learning, Special Event

Keep Scotland Beautiful

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At Cart Mill we have entered into the Keep Scotland Beautiful Pocket Garden competition. So, today the children got busy planting a variety of different seeds, bulbs and cuttings.

We started by gathering our tools, pots, seed trays, compost and watering  can.

Before we opened the seed packet we had a guess at the size, shape and colour of the seeds, with some great guesses” I think they are small” “ I think they are pink”  “ I think they are round” and I think that some of the boys and girls have done this before.


After making a hole with our finger we planted the “tiny” seeds and we filled the watering can because we know that plants need the “sun and water” to grow.

Next we went on to plant some daffodil bulbs, this time we used a bigger pot and had a go at lining them up from smallest to biggest.

We planted two pots of daffodils and decided to try an experiment by placing one pot in the greenhouse and the other outside. We want to see if there will be any differences, maybe one will grow bigger than the other!

Finally we potted the cuttings we were kindly given by Ben’s Mum and gave them to Derek to brighten up the studio.

A lovely addition to our Family Centre, thank you!

Here is a link to the competition if you would like to find out more about what we are doing in the garden- https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/media/1570993/opp-pocket-garden-comp-guide-2023-final-211222.pdf

 

Outdoor Learning

Ball play

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This morning in the garden we have been practising our balls skills.

We started by setting up the baskets in the tyres and playing some basketball. We tried throwing the ball in to the basket and also bouncing it in.

We had great fun trying but some of us found this a little tricky so we decided to practise our throwing skills a bit more.

We practised throwing and catching and also bouncing and catching.  We learned that we need to make sure the other person is ready to catch before throwing and we need to have hands out and keep our eyes on the ball to catch it.

After this we put our skills to use and played cooperatively by making a circle and passing the ball to the person next to us.

We learned that we should throw under arm when passing to a person and we need to alter how hard we throw depending on how far away the other person is.

Brilliant ball work boys and girls ⚽️🏀⛹️‍♂️