Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Gardening fun in the Greenhouse!

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.

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Keep Scotland Beautiful

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

 

Ball play

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 ⚽️🏀⛹️‍♂️

Framing Winter

As our weather is crisp and cold we have been looking and discovering more about winter in the world around us and how we keep ourself warm during this chilly time. We asked the children what they knew about winter weather and got some lovely responses;

“It’s Cold” “

“I wear snow boots”

“My fingers go red”

“Frost makes beautiful patterns”


We decided together that we would enjoy exploring our local environment to see what effect the colder weather had on our world around us.

First we dressed appropriately for our walk, we put our warm jackets, hats, boots and some of us had cosy gloves to keep us extra warm .

We looked at how the trees looked a bit sad and cold as their beautiful big leaves have left them bare, some of the leaves were lying on the ground.

During our walk we collected some of the leaves, some sticks, twigs and stones to take back to Cart Mill

“Leaves are wet”

“ I have found the biggest stick”

On our travels we also spotted a deer and its family through the bare trees. We walked a little further and saw lots of sheep.
“Are there any baby ones?”
We discussed that baby lambs can be seen in the spring and that’s the next season after winter, so not long to wait now.

When we arrived back at the nursery we decided to create our own winter pictures using the resources we found. The children were very creative designing their own trees and snowflakes. A lovely way for us to show our fun winter walk time.

 

Nature Walk Fun!

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week, with the aim of making a difference to the lives of children and young people across the UK. It has been highlighted how beneficial nature can be for a child’s well-being and for them to learn outside and connect to the environment around them.
At Cart Mill the children have opportunities every day to play and learn outside. Today we decided to go for a walk to find out more about the natural world around our nursery!
We challenged ourselves to collect some sticks for an activity.

“Wow!! Look at how big this stick is!”

”it’s a stick man!”

Some of the children noticed that some of the sticks they tried to collect could not be picked up! They cleverly spotted that it was because it was actually the roots from the trees nearby and we should leave them alone!

We carried on walking down to the bridge. We could hear birds chirping, an aeroplane in the sky and the river running. The children guessed the river was running fast today!  We played our favourite game, Pooh sticks! This involved collecting sticks, throwing them in the river and running to the other side to watch them!

We all threw our sticks in at the same time and they had a race!
“I can see mine! It’s winning!”

Walking back to nursery we came across some big piles of bark! The children absolutely loved running up and jumping off the bark! It was a nice soft landing!

”Look how high I can jump!”

We all enjoyed our nature walk and talked about all the things we could hear and see! We were definitely ready for lunch when we got back to nursery!

Tremendous Truck🚍 painting 😁


Today in the gross motor painting area the children self selected the trucks to paint  on the shower curtain  .“ I think we need some yellow paint “ “ I chose green paint, it’s a lovely colour. I don’t have any green cars at home just two grey ones “


“I’m mixing green and yellow, it’s turning blue” “ My car is painting fast” “ My cars tyres are painting yellow” “ look I’m making a circle shape with my truck”” My truck is going forwards and backwards , it’s making tracks”

The children are developing their gross motor skills, hand eye coordination as well as learning about colour mixing.
The children were happy with the end result of their art work. Well done everyone your art work looks amazing 🤩

Languages Week Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

This week is Languages Week Scotland 2023 where we celebrate language learning and multilingualism in Scotland. This years theme is “Languages for a peaceful world”.

This morning the children came across some stories and we discovered they were in different languages. This got us chatting about what language we speak in and how not everyone speaks the same language.

“What does this say”

“That is the title of the story, “The tortoise and the Hare” written in Mandarin, Chinese”

”When I went to Italy I hear a different language”

“Can you say any words in Italian”

”No”

“What language is the Elmer book in?”

“The Elmer book is in English and Polish”

“ how do you speak to someone if they don’t speak the same language?”

“Say Hello”

We used the internet to find out how to say Hello 👋  in other languages and wrote them down so we could practice how to say them.

The children were developing their mark making and writing  skills as they wanted to copy the words so they can practice.

We can now say Hello in different languages to welcome our friends who speak English as an additional language.

Big Garden Birdwatch

This week we have been preparing for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. We discussed why birds might come into the garden. “It’s for seeds, we have some in my garden”. We then decided to to make our own bird feeders and hang them up on a branch.

The birds might need a drink as it’s been very cold and all the puddles are icy, so we made the birds their own drinking bowl “Let’s put sticks near it so they can stand on them”.

We then did some research by looking at some of the information sent to us by the RSPB which showed us lots of pictures of the birds that might visit our garden.  “ I have seen some of these birds, that’s a magpie”.

It was very exciting watching for the birds. Some were far away so we used our binoculars. Then we could see some birds sitting in the trees and on top of the houses. We then thought about where else we could see the birds so we went for a bird watch walk.

We collected our bird watch recording sheet and set off.  I will hide in the trees like a bird watcher and see if the birds come near me we have to be very quiet 🤫. Look I saw a blackbird let’s mark it on the sheet .

We managed to spot magpies, blackbirds, crows and blue tits. We all had a turn of recording the bird we had seen on our RSPB sheet, it was great fun!

The children are continuing to watch for birds in our garden and are independently recording them in our nature corner.
If you would like to join in this weekend the RSPB ask that you record the birds that visit your garden within 1 hour and then you can upload your results at rspb.org.uk/Birdwatch using the code BH35.

Everyone has worked very hard recording the information and have had great fun developing their skills of mark making, data collection, fine motor skills, health and well being and lots more. Happy bird watching everyone!

Let it Rain ☔️

Today in the garden we spotted a rainbow in the sky. It sparked a conversation about the weather as it began to fade behind the big grey  clouds.

“It looks like it is going to rain, the rainbow is hiding behind the clouds”

”it rained lots and lots ands lots last night, there was big puddles in my garden I splashed in them”

“It rained so much I catched it in my hands, it was loads”

“How much rain was there?”

”I don’t know,just lots”

We decided to make a rain gauge to see if we could measure the rainfall throughout the week.

We wrote down all the resources we need and made a plan then got to  work.

Cutting off the top of the bottle to use as a funnel we placed it inside the bottle and taped off the jaggy bits to make it safe.
We then added the tip of an old felt tip pen to the bottles to make it easier to see how much rain has fallen. We used red, purple and blue.


We split the bottle in to 4 sections numbering it 1-4 so when it fills up with rain we can measure it. We then stapled the bottles to the fence and are now waiting patiently for it to rain to see how much water we collect. Typically  it stopped raining as soon as we were finished making the gauge.

We will be keeping an eye over the next few days and recording our findings.

Rainbow 🌈 Puddles

Today in the garden we had lots of puddles and yesterday we had seen a lovely rainbow in the sky. So, we decided to try and make our own rainbow using chalk and the puddles. We had to put wellies on for this! We chose the colour we wanted, dropped them in the puddles and squashed the chalk with our feet.

We had to practise our jumping and balancing skills for this. “I made a violet colour in my rainbow”. The girls and boys wanted to add more water, developing their filling and pouring skills and making different patterns with the chalk. “Mine looks like a unicorn”.

We also added in other resources to create different patterns. This helped the children to practice their mark making. I can use the brush and I can use the paint brush (mop).

Now we have discovered what happens when you mix water and chalk . We look forward to our next mixing with water experiment!