Category Archives: Special Event

🎄🎄Christmas Lunch at Cart Mill Cafe 🎄🎄

The festive season is in full swing at Cart Mill, and today we celebrated with our annual Christmas lunch! Preparations began this morning, with the children using their mark-making skills to create beautiful baubles to decorate our dining room, adding a personal touch to the festivities.  Using a selecting of Christmas craft materials, they explored their creative skills and made some fantastic Christmas decorations. We even has some amazing name writing!

On the menu was a mouthwatering traditional turkey dinner, complete with all the trimmings. It was a real treat for everyone! Let’s not forget the delicious ice cream for our pudding!

In early years, sharing meals together is so much more than just eating. It’s a valuable opportunity for children to develop their social skills, engage in meaningful conversations, and build connections with their peers and adults. Moments like these create lasting memories and help foster a strong sense of community.

Take a look at some of the photos and comments from today ☺️

”The carrots are my favourite”

”We have Christmas dinner at our house but it’s different”

”I like the turkey”

”It’s chocolate ice cream, that’s my favourite!”

The children were all smiles and clearly enjoyed every bite of their Christmas lunch, and let’s not forget a big thank you to our Louise our fantastic Cart Mill Chef!

Wishing everyone a joyful and festive season!

Article 1
Everyone under 18 has all these rights

Article 27
You have the right to a good enough standard of living.This means you should have food, clothes and a place to live

 

Cart Mill goes Christmas Crazy 🎄🎶🎅

We are officially in the festive mood now!

The Christmas trees came out of storage and the children were very excited to help decorate them. We popped on some Christmas tunes and got to work. The children shared lots of lovely stories about putting up their own trees at the weekend too.

The Christmas vibe took over other areas of the nursery as well..

Then we enjoyed a wee boogie to the Christmas music. Some of the children were even break dancing or doing ‘The worm’!

23 days to go!!

Family Learning Event

A huge thank you to our families who attended our Family Learning event.   Within East Renfrewshire schools and nurseries, there is a campaign to encourage more family learning in both early years centres and primary schools.  Many parents engage in their child’s education through stay and play sessions or meet the teacher, but we want to encourage you to join in their learning with us.

  • family learning helps extend teaching outside of the nursery and can improve educational outcomes for children
  • It is an effective way for parents to engage with their child’s nursery and can improve communication between practitioners and parents
  • it can also open new communication between parents and children and make learning fun for both

Our staff follow Curriculum For Excellence which is the curriculum for children from the age of 3-18.  All staff are qualified to deliver this and our event was a great opportunity to share the fantastic work they do.  Our  teacher Helen helps staff to plan learning activities in each area, which is then shared on our planning wall in the playroom, along with ideas of how you can continue this learning at home.

Eilidh, our STEM Ambassador, shared some of the fantastic experiments she helps our children create. Snowstorm in a jar and monster in a cup are amongst our favourites!

Helen helps support our children to develop their literacy and numeracy skills by creating fabulous learning activities.  She has created some really useful information on phonological awareness which is the foundation for helping our children develop their early reading skills and showcased some examples of how this could be reinforced at home.

Fiona recently attended the Hanen ABC and beyond training which supports children to develop and build their language, reading and writing skills.  She shared the wonderful work Iona has done with our children to develop their knowledge of environmental print such as familiar logos on packaging, signs and creating their own posters and helping with labelling their playroom.

Angela and Val were on hand to answer any questions, share information on transitions to Primary 1 or for families who may wish to defer their entry.
Our event was a wonderful opportunity to share information with families and to ask for ideas of how we can work together to help you join in your child’s learning.  Your thoughts and opinions are so important to us and we would love your feedback on times that would suit you best for us to hold future events and whether you would be interested in learning bags, information leaflets or any ideas you have.

 

 

Garden roundup

It’s been a busy week for us in the garden. We are developing our motor skills in a variety of ways.


This simple but effective experience enabled the children to experiment with colour mixing as well as developing their fine motor and early writing skills as they made marks on the foil using different  tools.

“ The blue got on the yellow and now the yellow looks a bit green”.

“I making fireworks”


The fireworks have really grabbed the children’s attention and been the topic of conversation. Throwing the powder paint on the ground sparked an idea. “The ground is black like the sky at night”

They threw lots of different colours on the ground and used small and large items to move and redirect the paint in different shapes and patterns.


Learning how to move our bodies in different ways to develop our gross motor skills and mark making skills has been so much fun.

We filled some tights with different materials such as sponges, pasta, pom poms and balls and used them to create a piece of art. This allowed the children to explore descriptive language as they figured out how to make marks on the foil.

“The pasta is spikey”

“ This one is really heavy I had to spin round and round to get the paint up there”

“ I want to get it to the top so I have to stretch my legs and stand on my tiptoes and do a big jump”

To end the week we thought it would be a good idea to begin learning about Remembrance Day and why we mark this as a special day. We watched a short child friendly video about the Poppy and decided to create our own.
The children used cut up potatoes and loose parts to make marks on the paper to create a lovely picture.

“ My dad wears a poppy for all the soldiers”

“ We can put purple on it too to remember the Animals”

Super Sports Day!

Today was Sports Day here at Cart Mill! Excitement has been building over the last couple of weeks and we have all been practicing our favourite races!

It was very exciting to arrive at our sports area and see all our races set up by Chris, our Active Schools Co-ordinator.  Off we set to our first race.  After a quick run down of what we needed to do it was time to ready, steady, GO!!!

We ran and jumped over the hurdles and then ran back to the start to see who could finish first! It was so much fun that our families wanted to join in too! (Well done mums!)

Next up was our obstacle course.  We had to run up to the hula hoop, hop or star jump and then see if we could walk balancing a beanbag on our heads! It was a wee bit tricky but we took our time and demonstrated some fabulous balancing skills!

It was time for our flat race next! Some of us were a wee bit excited and forgot to wait for the ready, steady Go.  With a bit of practice, we soon got the hang of it! Who do you think was fastest!

Our final race was the egg and spoon race.  We are very imaginative here at Cart Mill, so we decided to have our own version, the tangerine and spoon race!

Of course what better way to round up sports day than  our super duper water slide!

It was so much fun to take turns sliding super fast down our slide.  We discovered if Val gave us a wee helping hand, we went even faster! And more bubbles appeared the faster we went (there’s definitely a science experiment in there somewhere!).
After all the fun it was time to head back inside for a quick change, ice pole and to receive our certificates.  We truly are sporting super stars!

A huge thank you to staff, Chris from Active Schools and to our fabulous families and children for making it such a memorable event.

Article 31 – the right to engage in play and recreational activities.

Super Spring Crafts!

It has been lovely to see the first signs of spring arriving at Cart Mill through our beautiful crocuses and daffodils blooming in our garden, which inspired some fabulous art artwork!

What better way to celebrate the arrival of Spring than to welcome our families to join us at our Spring Craft Event!   As ever, our children brought their creativity and enthusiasm and created some wonderful transient art, spring wreaths and some amazing artwork using their foot and handprints to display on our wall!


Of course we can’t forget decorating our biscuits, which were a firm favourite!

“I putted lots of sprinkles on mine”

”I love jam”

Family is so important to us at Cart Mill, please feel free to pop in anytime for a coffee, chat or to stay and play.

Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play.

 

Bye bye babies

Today we said goodbye to two of our colleagues as they finish for their well earned maternity leave. Sarah-Jane, our senior child development officer and Lorraine, our early years playworker both finished today to have a few restful weeks before their new bundles of joy arrive! The children made beautiful cards and even suggested names for the new arrivals.

These included Spiderman, Baby Spiderman, Rainbow, Kelsie, Forever Baby and Teddy Bear. I wonder which of these fabulous names Sarah-Jane and Lorraine will pick!

After giving over lots of lovely gifts, we sang songs and said goodbye but thankfully it is not forever. We cannot wait for the babies (and their mummy’s) to visit us at Cart Mill.

World Book Day 2024 📚

Happy World Book Day everyone!

The boys and girls have loved showing off the costumes of their favourite book character.

I’m very jealous of all the children wearing their super cosy jammies! They look so comfy!

We have all enjoyed lots of stories throughout the day and have taken part in lots of role play, making up our own stories as well. We even had Paddington selling ice cream in the garden!

We also enjoyed a story altogether for group time called Ruby’s Worry.

What’s your favourite story?

Article 29- your education should help you use and develop your talents and abilities.

Languages Week Scotland!

Last week at Cart Mill, we participated in Languages Week Scotland, a wonderful initiative aimed at celebrating the diverse languages within our centre and around the world.  Take a look at some of the activities:

During our daily group time, we kicked off the day with greetings in different languages – Bonjour, Hola, Merhaba, and Ciao plus many more.  The children had a great time trying out these diverse hellos, turning language time into an engaging experience. 

We infused technology into our story time, exploring stories in Spanish and French. ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ took on a language twist, and the children even grasped counting to three in both Spanish and French – quite impressive!

Wednesday brought a delightful surprise – one of our parents very kindly visited the centre to read a story in Gaelic. The children enjoyed learning animal names in Gaelic, making the session an enriching language journey. 



Thursday saw a visit from Camembear when we sang songs in French and talked about the French words that we already knew. We then asked how to say some of our favourite things in French. Our favourite one was the French for sweets – bonbon – because they are good good!

Finally, on Friday afternoon, we held a grand Book Bug gathering! We sang songs in French and Gaelic, and the children selected different languages to welcome Book Bug. Some even remembered to say hello in French or Spanish, showcasing their newfound language skills. We were then treated to some story telling in Polish.

Languages Week wasn’t just about words, it was a week filled with smiles, curiosity, and a lot of language fun. Here’s to our fantastic little language explorers! 🌟🌍✨

UNCRC ARTICLES

Article 8: Right to an identity

Article 28: Education

 

Intergenerational play 😀

In preparation for our visit to Bonnyton House the children helped to make gift to take…..what should we make??


Bird feeders

Last weekend was our big birdwatch, we had made bird feeders to welcome birds to our nursery garden and we thought it would be a lovely idea to make some bird feeders to share.

After we had delivered our gifts we all enjoyed a little sing, with the children demonstrating ‘Twinkle twinkle chocolate bar’ and our friends teaching us ‘The farmer wants a wife’

The children and staff all had a great time and we think we could all benefit from these visits…we’re all looking forward to the next one 😄

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