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 years‘ Maths Week Scotland theme of ‘finding the beauty in maths’, 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.
‘I like grapes”“Ben do it.”
Some children were able to create their own more complex patterns with three different kinds of their favourite fruit.
“I am doing the same again.”
“I need the banana again.”
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!
“In and out.”“I’m doing colours.”
In our Playdough Area…
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 Simon’s 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! 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 school….
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 wasn’t just the children who had all the fun! 😀
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! 😎
Today was a day for celebration in Cart Mill as we had a ‘street party’ to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The children and staff all made such an effort to dress up for the occasion. Thankfully the weather was kind and we were able to decorate the garden with red, white and blue flags and bunting. It looked fit for a queen!
The best bit is, we got to do it all again in the afternoon – a double party!
The children enjoyed Victoria Sponge Cake, scones with jam and cream – we had jam first, how do you have yours? We also had fresh fruit and a glass of chilled water to wash it all down. It was a fantastic party which was followed up with a Royal banquet at lunch.
We were very proud of the children – who, along with Iona made all the party food. Here are some pictures of them hard at word making their Victoria sponge cakes and their fruit scones. Maybe you could ask your star bakers to show you their skills at home because we can tell you, their baking is delicious!
The children have been very excited this week learning all about the Queen and her upcoming Platinum Jubilee. In the garden they worked together using the big building blocks to build Buckingham Palace or “the Queens house” as the children liked to call it!
We added cylinders to our Palace to make turrets and the children wanted a ramp at the front to slide out.
The blue blanket was used to create water in front of the Palace and other blankets to make a bridge at the side!
”The bridge is a shaky bridge to keep people out!”
”No one can get to our Queen across the water!”
The coloured material was used by the children to dress up as the Queen in her Palace. They had great fun roleplaying all different scenarios pretending to be royalty.
The children decided the Palace needed a flag so we painted some cardboard in red and blue to create a flag!
We taped a cane to our flag and stuck it in the Palace.
The children were very proud of their Palace and flag! They had lots of fun playing in it and it attracted other children to come and play too! We are all looking forward to continuing our Jubilee theme with our party tomorrow.
We had a special visitor at Cart Mill today! One of our nursery mum’s came to teach us all about hand washing. Eilidh brought her special germ finding equipment to show us what happens when we don’t wash our hands properly.
First Eilidh asked us if we knew when and why we wash our hands. Of course our clever Cart Mill children could tell us. “Before my lunch/snack” “when you go to the toilet.” “If you touch anything that’s muddy” “when you blow your nose”.
Eilidh told us about Glitter Bug. Glitter bug was shy and was hiding in the bottle. Glitter bug is a special soap that shows us what we miss when we clean our hands.
When we had the glitter bug Soap on, Eilidh showed us her method of checking our hands. We put our hands in the black tent and a UV light was able to highlight any spots that were dirty.
When the UV light was on, our hands went a purple colour and we could see the white “germs”. Next Eilidh asked us to re-wash our hands and look at the difference.
We put our freshly washed hands back in the tent, under the UV light and all the “germs” had vanished.
We loved seeing the difference good hand washing with soap makes, and we learned the importance of properly washing our hands. It was so much fun! Even Emma and Helen had a turn. Thank you so much for coming to visit us today Eilidh!
It’s been such a busy week at Cart Mill. We are so looking forward to our holiday weekend! What better way to end the week than having a fun day!
First of all we decided to have an Easter Egg hunt to make sure everyone has had an egg to take home. The eggs were tricky to find, but with a bit of teamwork and encouraging each other, we managed to find them all!
Next it was time to practice our directions and positional language on our bikes! We were able to go forwards and backwards, stop and start, fast and slow, and race each other round our track. We drew our own arrows and reminded each other to follow them so that we didn’t have any crashes!
We created our own obstacle course and carried out our own risk assessments to decide how many crates we would feel safe to jump from.
Then it was time to see who could roll the cable reels the furthest!
We were exhausted after using up all of our energy outside so it was time for some Peter Rabbit and some popcorn and fruit for snack.
Have a lovely holiday weekend everyone. We look forward to welcoming you back when we reopen on Tuesday.
We had our very own Easter Egg Hunt at Cart Mill today!
Our older children demonstrated egg-cellent leadership skills by hiding the eggs for their friends and giving a wee helping hand to find them!
We found some egg-cellent hiding places…..
While our friends played “Sleepy Bunnies”
Then the fun began. We popped on our beautiful Easter bonnets and off we went! We all took turns and worked together. It didn’t take long to find all the eggs! There were some great hiding places!
We had so much fun and we all received an egg to take home….. We took our time to choose which colour of egg we would like!
Today is pancake day and the children were very excited to make pancakes for snack. We had a look at our recipe and gathered together our ingredients. The children had a look at the numbers on the scales and jug to make sure we measured the correct quantities. We then added everything together and used the whisk to blend it into a smooth, runny consistency ready for cooking.
We had some fun tossing our pancakes in the air and catching them in our pan. This helped develop their hand and eye coordination skills and also their balance. We also enjoyed our Bookbug session with stories and a few renditions of “pop a little pancake into the pan”.
At snack time the children chose what they would like to have on their pancakes. We had bananas, strawberries, raspberries or lemon juice. “This was a great snack”. There was lots off discussion amongst the children about who had pancakes for breakfast today . This social time helps the children with language and taking turns during the conversation. “Hope my mummy makes pancakes tonight “ .
The children asked if they could make more pancakes in the afternoon. It had been such a long time since we had cooked pancakes on the fire we asked Val and Fiona if they would light the fire. It was a big yes so we spent the afternoon in the sun, around the fire pit having… MORE PANCAKES!
The children watched as the pancakes turned from a liquid into a solid and commented on the bubbles!
‘We can see bubbles! That means they’re ready to turn!’
Today at Cart Mil we have been celebrating Lunar New Year 2022 by participating in various activities both indoors and outdoors! 2022 is the year of the tiger. We discussed the features of a tiger then decided to look for stripes while out for a walk. Look at all the stripes we found….
We also enjoyed having a race through the woods and a play in the spider park on the way back to nursery.
For snack today we sampled different foods that might be eaten during Lunar New Year celebrations.
We enjoyed tasting noodles, rice and lychees!
In the Home room we decided to make our own fortune cookies which were delicious!
We decided to make our playdough the same colours as a tiger and had lots of fun creating our own Lunar New Year tigers!
In the Discovery room we used our interactive board to research the history of Lunar New Year.
We used our creativity and imagination in the Studio today to make celebration ribbons and streamers. We then used them to recreate our own Lunar New Year celebration dance.
We have had so much fun celebrating and learning the history of Lunar New Year.
Today the children celebrated Burns’ Day with a variety of different experiences throughout the centre.
Out in the garden the children made Scotch pancakes cooked on our fire. They enjoyed measuring and mixing the ingredients and watched whilst Fiona cooked them on the fire pit. They demonstrated good listening skills whilst being told about how to keep safe around the fire.
Continuing the Scottish theme, some of the children used their creative skills to design their own tartan using paint and cars. They rolled their car in the paint then onto their paper.
In the Home Room the children asked to make flapjacks. They measured each of the ingredients, developing both numeracy and literacy skills. After mixing them together they used the clock to time how long they took to cook in the oven. They even assisted with cleaning up.
The children in the Discovery Room read a story by Rebecca Colby and Kate McLelland about a wee lassie who swallowed a midgie! They watched a short story on the life of Robert Burns and enjoyed some highland dancing.
The children love to sing at Cartmill and today was no exception. In the Studio they learned some Scottish songs; Coulter’s Candy, 3 Craws sat upon a Wa’ and Pop a little pancake into a pan. They even joined in, playing musical instruments.
All the children enjoyed tasting some haggis, neeps and tatties for snack and tasted some of their flapjacks.
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