Category Archives: Special Event

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”.

Special Event

It’s beginning to look like Christmas

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The children received a lovely surprise when they arrived this morning. Yesterday two beautiful Christmas Trees were delivered. One for the front door and the other placed in the Home Room.

The children said it looked very bare and asked if they could decorate it. They found the box of decorations and picked out the ornaments they would like to put on.

Look, I like this star
I have a bell

The children also found some tinsel and some lights.

The children noticed that some of the branches were white and it looked like snow!

A star on the top completes their tree.

Our wonderful decorators!

‘All it needs now is some presents!’

After the tree was finished the children decided to make festive play dough. They used red and green glitter to make it sparkle.

M made her own wee Christmas tree with a star on the top just like the one in our Home Room.

The children are now getting excited about the big day.

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Special Event

Exploring Tartan

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With St Andrew’s day this week, the children have been discussing all things Scottish. We decided to have a look at tartan fabric. First, we did some research on how tartan was made. The coloured threads are made from wool and you usually need between two and six colours to make the pattern on the fabric. A machine called a loom is threaded up and it moves forwards and backwards, weaving the threads together to make the design. We discovered that you need over 7 metres of material to make one kilt!!

We also had fun looking for our own family tartans. One child found out that theirs has some red in it red. Some of us could not find our tartan so we decided to make our own Cart Mill family tartans. The children were very creative using cars, wooden blocks and cotton reels rolled in paint before moving them across the paper to create a chequered, tartan design. The children also chose some tartan strips of paper to cut and glue onto their kilts. Cutting helps develop a child’s fine motor skills by encouraging independent movement of each finger, it also promotes hand/eye coordination.
We then decorated our room with our lovely new tartans. Why don’t you have a look and find out if you have a family tartan, if not, you could make one too!

We look forward to learning more about Scotland and its heritage this week.

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Clydebuilt Puppet Theatre

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On Wednesday we had a visit from Clydebuilt  Puppet Theatre. They told us three cautionary tales- The Ungrateful Crocodile which taught us to be kind to others who are kind to us, The Forgotten Treasure which is about being grateful for what you have and a good old favourite Red Riding Hood- The Wolf’s Story.

The children absolutely loved watching the show! There were lots of oohs and aahs and plenty of giggles too. Thank you so much to Steve and Leigh for the wonderful performances.

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Music and Rythmn

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Today was very exciting, we had a music teacher visit us.  We had our listening ears on!! . We sang some new songs and followed the actions to warm ourselves up.

We all got to choose a musical instrument and learnt their names, we played them very loudly and really quietly. We moved the instruments around high and low then left  and right to the beat and count of 1234.

Our teacher, a lovely lady called Lyndsey, then played a ukulele which is like a small guitar. We sang If You’re Happy and You Know It and then Sleeping Bunnies. As we all listened, and joined in, we got a sticker at the end. We are looking forward to next week to see what we will learn.  🎶.

Special Event

Happy Diwali🪔

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Today in the toddler room we have been learning all about Diwali and how it’s celebrated, we watched a lovely story on the smart board and the children picked out their favourite patterns.

We then decided to create our own Diwali patterns with coloured rice, here are some of the children’s great work. We used different mark making utensils and our fingers to create these lovely Diwali inspired patterns.

We finished the day off listening to some Diwali music and dancing with our rainbow ribbons.

Special Event

Olympic Fever

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Olympic fever has arrived at Cartmill.

Yesterday the children enjoyed their own mini games which started them talking about various sports that they all take part in. Running races, jumping, bike racing, tennis, basketball, gymnastics, swimming, football, golf to name a few.

This led to talk about the Olympics being held over the next couple of weeks in Tokyo, Japan. Some children asked what the Olympics were. Through discussions with staff, they learned that the Olympics were held every 4 years with people from countries all over the world taking part in lots of different sports to win medals for their country.

The children watched some of the Opening Ceremony from London 2012 with great interest and tried to guess the countries from their flags, as well as watching the ceremony where the medals are awarded.

1st, 2nd and 3rd place
J said it goes round her neck
She looked very happy

After their mini games some of the children asked if they could make their own little medals. They found some gold, silver and a bronze coloured shiny paper and some ribbon. They glued the shiny paper onto some card, cut out a circle and attached some ribbon.

S’s medal goes over her head like the one on the screen.

C shows her silver medal off with pride.

Who knows we may have a future olympian here at Cartmill.

Taking part in sports helps to keep our bodies fit and healthy and improves our general health and wellbeing.

Special Event

Merry Christmas from the toddlers🎄💕

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This week we are feeling very festive in the toddler room, we have  been busy creating lots of lovely Christmas crafts as well as Icing Christmas biscuits and adding some Christmas sprinkles. 

We made Christmas cards for our loved ones, and also added lots of tinsel and sparkle to our very own Christmas baubles which I’m sure will be admired for many Christmas’s to come.