Category Archives: Social Studies

Welcome to our block play! 🧱

Today in the block area the children have been exploring the first two stages of block play, carrying and stacking. These stages allow children to carry the blocks around and use their senses to feel different shapes and weights and begin to explore building by stacking blocks vertically to create towers and horizontally to form rows.

Froebel block play has 7 stages, the children are starting at the beginning as for some of our children we are exploring the block area for the first time. For our older children, this gives us the opportunity to become role models and share our previous knowledge and skills.

The children worked together to carry the blocks to where they wanted to go, great teamwork everyone!

Then we used our knowledge and problem solving skills to create our stacking towers, some children used large blocks, some used small blocks. We remembered our safety rules and didn’t build our towers any higher than our necks.

  

Block play helps children to learn to take turns and share materials, develop new friendships and co operate with others. It also allows children to develop their special awareness and develop their risk assessment skills.

New and improved wormery

Following on from our last up-cycling project, we can now say we have finished fixing our broken wormery.

The children have worked so hard over the past couple of weeks using the tools and their problem solving skills to put it back together. They worked as a team to decide what they would use and what tools would work best.

“This small bit is too small”

“ We could use this long piece of wood on the side”

“we need a little nail and a hammer to put it on we don’t want to break the wood in half”

“What does this do? it has a bubble in it”

We learned that the spirit level indicates whether a surface is ‘Level’ or ‘plumb’.

“What does plumb mean?” We researched it and found out that ”Plumb means that the surface is sitting straight, it is vertical” This meant that we could check the sides were running straight up and down. We also used the spirit level to check the wormery was level across the top and bottom. We found out this is horizontal!

Every tinker table experience is different, even if it seems the same. We learn new vocabulary every day and learn skills that we can transfer into our everyday life, especially as we get older.

Using a wormery for compost is an easy and environmentally-friendly way of turning food waste in to nutritious compost to feed your garden.

Now we just need find some worms to come and live in it and make up its bedding! 🐛

Creative clay ⚒

In the clay area today the children have been super creative and using their design skills and imagination to create models. We have also been exploring and using different tools and techniques to create patterns and prints on the clay…

we used lots of different loose parts to create some “birthday cakes” and sang happy birthday to our friends.

then we used different tools to copy and create patterns and textures on the clay, we practiced hammering, rolling and creating prints showing how creative and imaginative we can be!


Exploring with clay helps to develop our hand eye co-ordination and fine motor manipulating skills. It gives the children the opportunity to socialise with their friends through talking and listening to each other’s ideas and also work independently.

i wonder what creations we will make over the next few weeks! 🤩

 

Cart Mill Sports Day!

The children had so much fun today exploring the different stations of our sports day event. We had to listen really well and follow the instructions as we moved around each of the stations & at the end we had the famous Cart Mill water slide!

Here is some pictures.. enjoy!

We had a running race.. we can go so fast!

The sack race..

Hurdle jumping…

Egg and spoon race

and the famous water slide…

As you can understand it is super difficult to post all of the pictures on the blog.. We will have them on the tv screen in the reception area for you to have a look at at pick up or drop off time!

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.

Burns day at Cart Mill

Happy Burns Day!

Today at Cart Mill we have been celebrating all things Scottish…

We have been making Scotland flags in the playdough area with Emma using blue and white playdough…

We have had so much fun helping Fiona to make Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, we helped to peel the potatoes 🥔 and then we got to taste it at snack time!

We also had a try at some Scottish dancing today in the discovery room… We listened to Scottish ceilidh music and practiced some traditional dance moves with the help of Gails expertise!

In the studio, we have used different coloured ribbons to create our own tartan pictures. The children were able to select their own colours and create their own patterns inspired by pictures of various tartan…

As you can see the children have had so much fun exploring a variety of experiences throughout the day at nursery! We have had a fabulous burns day  🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

 

Remembrance day

This week some of the children have noticed Angela’s poppy badge and have been asking why she is wearing it. In honour of Remembrance Day we decided to make our own poppies and discuss the importance of Remembrance Day. This can be a difficult subject for children to understand, so we talk about remembering the soldiers who help to keep us safe and focus on the importance of kindness and celebrating each other’s differences.

The making of the poppies has been a two part process. We started yesterday by looking at pictures of poppies and discussing the different parts of the flower. We dyed pasta red for the petals, rice black for the seeds and coloured lollipop sticks green for the stems. We then left that to dry to use the next day and made red playdough to make poppies with that day.

Today we observed a two minute silence while watching a CBeebies video about Remembrance Day. The children sat beautifully and we reminded them about the importance of being kind to each other after the video.


“We need to remember the soldiers that fought in the fight.”

The video shows the poppies growing in the fields after the war has ended so we then went to make our own poppies.

“I’m making a poppy field. These are the seeds so more can grow.”

“Look at my poppy man.”

Just look at our beautiful designs…

This week in the noisy/quiet room

Following on from recent interests, this week in the noisy quiet room the children have enjoyed exploring the farm animals in the small world area.

The children have been using their imagination and role play skills to create their own stories and play using the small world equipment.

”its Old MacDonald’s farm, there is sheep and pigs and cows”

”There is little cows and big cows, small goats too”

”My favourite animal is the pig”

The children have also recently enjoyed building with our wooden train track and talking about all the different places you could go on a train…

   

”You could go to the shops or to a restaurant”

”I go on holidays”

”Trains go so fast”

Small world play is a great way for children to explore their imagination and develop their role play skills. It could represent a real life place like a farm or it could be a completely imaginary world.

 

Why don’t you try some small world play at home?

Firework Splat Painting!

Today In the garden we created some firework pictures in preparation for bonfire night this weekend.

The children selected some paint and resources that they could spray and splat. We picked a selection of different spray bottles and pipettes to spray at the large plastic sheet and create our firework picture.

The spray bottles and pipettes helped us to develop our fine motor skills. We demonstrated good skill when filling them up and spaying them.

We then used the paint and sponges to throw the paint at the ground to make splats that resembled fireworks. This was a good way to get our bodies moving and develop our gross motor skills while being creative.


While we were painting we talking about fireworks and how we can stay safe.  These are some of the children’s comments.
😊

“You don’t touch the fire”

“Fireworks and very hot so you need to stay away”

“They go in the sky”

“Only adults do the fireworks”

Building fun 👷🏻‍♂️

Today the children loved engaging their imaginations in the construction area. We had a variety of building materials for the children to use, and they enjoyed creating different types of role playing scenarios.

“I want to make a hotel for spider man”

“We’re making a tunnel for the train”

”eyes!”

The children worked great as part of a team, helping each other and using their problem solving skills to build their creations. Some children loved making rocket ships…

Other children enjoyed making busses and dens…

”beep beep!”

And we even had a Spider Man fire engine!

The children really loved showing off their creativity through role playing with the blocks, and sharing the fun with all their friends. Great work everybody 👍🤩