Category Archives: Special Event

Special Event

Easter Fun at Cart Mill!

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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.

 

Special Event

Easter Egg Hunt 😀

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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!

Literacy, Snack, Special Event

Pancake 🥞 Day

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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!’

Outdoor Learning, Snack, Social Studies, Special Event, Trips and Outings

Kung Hey Fat Choi

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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.

Kung Hey Fat Choi!

 

 

Special Event

Celebrating Robert Burns 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

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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.

Special Event

Christmas Concerts

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The children were amazing today performing for the parents and family members who had come along to watch in our garden.

We loved having the ponies, Annabelle and Eddie to join us.

The children got the chance to feed them and their favourite snack is carrots.

The children give us year-round joy and it was so lovely to have our parents and families here with us today to share in that joy.

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Making Christmas memories

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Today in the home room the children have been busy making their very own Christmas tree ornaments  using salt dough and their own creative skills!

We demonstrated good social skills by working together to carefully measuring the ingredients and adding them to a bowl to mix.

We exercised our manipulative and fine motor skills  and we strengthened our muscles through lots of mixing, kneading, rolling and cutting our dough.

We listened carefully and demonstrated we are very careful when using an oven as it can get very hot! We baked our dough  shapes in the oven to make them hard.

We decorated our decorations with our own choice of coloured paint, glitter and snow dust. We then tied some beautiful ribbon to them so we can hang them on our tree,


Special Event

It’s Christmas time!!

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Today the children got into the Christmas spirit when we made Gingerbread people! We explored different smells and textures when baking our cookies, and our favourite one was the “ginger” and “sticky golden syrup”. It was quite tricky at first to mix as the mixture was very tough for our little muscles, but with good team work, we managed to make a nice yummy dough. We developed our muscles some more rolling the dough nice and flat and cutting out our shapes.

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When the gingerbread people had cooled down, we explored our fine motor skills by decorating them with some fancy buttons and happy faces. Some children even made a “skirt” and “big muscles”.