We had a very busy day today, hosting two fabulous Christmas concerts. Both started off with a welcoming hot chocolate, complete with cream and marshmallows and what else, but a mince pie đĽ§.
This gave parents the chance to chat and catch up with each other before our first indoor concert since 2019.
It was so nice to have such a busy centre, filled with the chat of families.
The children have been practising their songs all month and the hard work and rehearsals paid off as they were magnificent.
The staff have worked so hard with everyone and our families were treated to the Christmas favourites, We Wish You a Merry Christmas and of course Jingle Bells, as well as a few other songs.
Once the children had finished, we decided it was so good, we would sing it all again but this time we decided the grown ups should join in too!
Thank you all for joining us for our concerts today, we loved having you back in the centre and hope you agree with us that our Cart Mill children are super talented!
For anyone who finished up with us today, please have a wonderful break with the people you love and we will see you next year.
Today at Cart Mill we got to wear our pyjamas to nursery! All the children loved showing off their cosy warm pyjamas.
We watched a short video of Santa outside Cart Mill which got the children very excited! Some of the children heard bells ringing and spotted Santa in our garden! He had arrived at nursery to see us all!
The children went in groups to see Santa and they all got a gift and their photo taken! Santa was so happy to meet such lovely, polite children!
After the excitement of seeing Santa we had some chilled time and got comfy with cushions and blankets on the rug and watched some Christmas Mickey Mouse!
We then had plenty of energy for some Christmas dancing! We copied the elves on the board and made up our own unique dance moves!
What a great fun day we all had, getting in the festive spirit. We are all so excited to share our wonderful singing with you at our concert tomorrow.
It was lovely to have our families visit the centre to take part in our family winter craft sessions.
The children really enjoyed taking part in the winter themed activities alongside the special people in their lives. There were lots of different crafts to make, each with a different theme. We won’t tell you what they all are as we would love you to come and see for yourself!
Remember that the crafts are running all week and we have 3 sessions a day. So, please sign up via the sheets in reception and come in out of the cold and join us for a coffee and some wintery fun with your wee one!
Today is the start of Book Week Scotland 2022. This year the theme is Scotland Stories – traditional Scottish tales and legends.
We introduced Book week Scotland in our Noisy/Quiet room by sharing traditional and Scottish books with our children.
We picked which story we liked best and settled down, nice and comfy, to read them together.
One of the Scottish stories the children picked to read was about bagpipes. Some of the children were keen to find out more about Bagpipes. Luckily Gail was on hand to show us videos of her family members who had visited Cart Mill previously to play the bagpipes for us.
It was a fantastic learning experience for the children to relate the story book to a real life event.
After we brushed our teeth, we read another story. This one was about the Lock Ness monster. Some of our children had the opportunity to paint their very own Loch Ness monster after reading the story in the Studio Room.
Book Bug came to visit the Noisy/Quiet room and shared a Scottish story about a girl named Katie Morag. Emma told the children that she used to read this story when she was at school a very long time ago.
We even had a wee cuddle of Bookbug as we shared the story.
We have enjoyed listening to the Scottish stories both as part of a group and on our own.
Reading stories are so much fun and are a fantastic way to promote the early literacy skills our our children. Books hold vast learning opportunities. Reading books promotes vocabulary expansion, introducing new words. Books also helps to increase imagination and creativity. Reading stories together also helps to Improve concentration and memory skills. And many more skills all from reading stories.
I wonder what other learning opportunities we will have through the week as we celebrate Book Week Scotland across each of our playrooms/gardens within Cart Mill.
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 childrenâs comments. đ
âYou donât touch the fireâ
âFireworks and very hot so you need to stay awayâ
Today in the noisy quiet room we had a chat about Diwali and learned about the festival of lights. We watched some videos of traditional dancing and decided to give it a go ourselves since we love to dance.
We used a selection of materials and musical instruments to take part in the Diwali celebrations.
First we selected some brightly coloured material to make our own outfits ready to dance.
Then we put on some traditional music and enjoyed some dancing with our friends.
It was all about maths in the Studio Room as we celebrated Maths week Scotland. Which fitted in perfectly with our learning provocation area.
We have been learning about different artists and what their famous art work is. This month itâs Kandinsky.
Kandinsky is famous for his wonderful abstract work that have various shapes in them.
We have been trying our hand at creating our version of some of his paintings, using circles.
First we used paint to create a large scale painting. We used each of our primary paint colours and using our colour mixing skills creating bright and different colours just like the oneâs Kandinsky uses. Â We used our shape recognition skills to create huge and tiny circles inside one another.
Next we used our scissor skills to cut circles out of felt, gum paper, foam and shiny paper. We experimented with different textures for this abstract art picture.
We used our counting skills as we counted how many circles we used for our pictures.
We also tried ink prints using ink pads and corks to print circles onto paper to create a different type of abstract art. We used our 3D shape recognition skills to learn the shape of the cork.
The children enjoyed using the provocation area themselves to recreate Kandinskys work in their own ways. They used chalks,
Using digital technology on our paint app, on the smart board,
Paint dabbers,
and our pencils.
We were very proud of the work we created.
to finish off our week of Kandinsky circles art we used different circle shaped resources to draw around. We tried records, cups, pots  and mirrors.
It was a wonderful creation.
Maths can be a big part of art and is found in each area in our art room, it could be shape recognition with the different sizes of boxes in the junk model area. Counting how many pumps of the paint  we need to mix colours. Making patterns with the collage materials or clay and many more opportunities to learn our Maths skills with the joy of Art.
I wonder what artist we will learn about next?
Here is a wee look at some of our other maths experiences we have took part in through the week within our Studio Room. That have challenged and develop our children from 2-5 year olds with their maths skills.
In our Home Room this week we have been celebrating Maths Week  Scotland. We have been using the different learning areas In our Home Room to explore this yearsâ Maths Week Scotland theme of  âfinding the beauty in mathsâ, learning how we use maths in all different ways.
In our Baking and Sewing Areas…. As part of Maths Week have been exploring pattern through making some yummy fruit kebabs! We talked about the different colours, shapes and sizes of the fruit and then used our favourites to create a fruity pattern.
Some of the children were able to copy and continue a simple pattern using their favourite two fruits.
âI like grapesââBen do it.â
Some children were able to create their own more complex patterns with three different kinds of their favourite fruit.
âI am doing the same again.â
âI need the banana again.â
In our sewing area we made patterns threading our different coloured beads, and sewing patterns onto the leaves we collected. We had to concentrate hard as it was very tricky!
âIn and out.ââIâm doing colours.â
In our Playdough AreaâŚ
In our playdough area we have been learning how to make our playdough more independently. We have been using measuring, pouring and filling skills to correctly follow the recipe . We decided to record our recipe and display it to help our friends make their own.
“I scoop of salt.”
In our Home Corner……… Stories are a great way to engage children in mathematical conversations. Stories help children to see the relevance of maths to their own lives and develop their understanding of mathematical concepts and language in meaningful contexts.
We explored the story of Simon the Sock. Simon is an odd stripey sock. He lives in the sock drawer with all the other socks. Every sock in the drawer has a pair…except for Simon. Will he ever find his match?
Through exploring the story the children were able to use and develop mathematical skills such as sorting, matching, reasoning and comparing. We loved looking through Simonâs sock drawer. We used our matchIng skills to help Simon  find all the matching pairs!
We then used our observation skills to look at the different patterns. We described all the patterns we could see, spots, stripes, stars and some of us even spotted that we had patterns on our own socks on our feet! Â Â Simon the sock challenged us to use our sorting skills to each decide a different way we could sort our socks. We even used our mark making skills to record how we were going to sort them each time!
When we had completed our challenge we matched all the socks together again in their pairs, well all apart from Simon!
We wonder if any of you have an odd socks like Simon in your home?!
With our summer term  ending and many of our children getting ready to finish their time with us to move on to schoolâŚ.
What better way to enjoy our last days of nursery and the most likely (but hopefully not) the glorious  sunshine, was to spend today having a fun day having some slippy sunny day sliding on our big water slide!
Using our soapy liquid and our running water hose  we had lots of exciting fun and laughs sliding down our hilly slope.
As you can tell it wasnât just the children who had all the fun! đ
We used our bodies in different ways to find the most fun and fastest ways to go down!
The most difficult part was the climb back up the hill to the top; it was well worth it though for those few moments we had laughing all the way down!
Once we were all dried off and changed into dry clothing we cooled off and enjoyed a relaxing snack with an icy treat! đ
