Category Archives: Technologies

Expressive Arts, Technologies

Upcycling project

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This week the children have been working very hard to start their up cycling project at the tinker table.

They began by  looking for something around the playroom that they could ‘Up cycle’. They found an old storage drawer that had missing handles on the boxes. They collected loose materials such as buttons, pipe cleaners, beads, bottle lids,  small wood chips and twigs to use as new handles for the boxes.


They used skills they had previously learned at the tinker table to join the new handles to the box.

“I can use the hammer and nails to put this wood on”

 

Once all the new handles were on the children noticed one of the drawers were missing. Using their problem solving skills one of the older children suggested making a sign to let everyone know that the new up cycled storage drawers belong to the tinker table.

The next job on the list is to up cycle our broken wormery, we are looking for longer pieces of wood if anyone has any lying about that they no longer need.

Expressive Arts, Social Studies, Technologies

Creative clay ⚒

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In the clay area today the children have been super creative and using their design skills and imagination to create models. We have also been exploring and using different tools and techniques to create patterns and prints on the clay…

we used lots of different loose parts to create some “birthday cakes” and sang happy birthday to our friends.

then we used different tools to copy and create patterns and textures on the clay, we practiced hammering, rolling and creating prints showing how creative and imaginative we can be!


Exploring with clay helps to develop our hand eye co-ordination and fine motor manipulating skills. It gives the children the opportunity to socialise with their friends through talking and listening to each other’s ideas and also work independently.

i wonder what creations we will make over the next few weeks! 🤩

 

Literacy, Technologies

Exploring our senses!

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Today our little investigators took part in an activity to explore our senses. Following on from exploring our sense of smell, today we looked at our sense of touch.

A selection of item’s were chosen and hidden inside our mystery bag. Using our sense of touch the children had to guess what was inside the bag. They were encouraged to use descriptive words to describe what they could feel. Once they had made their predictions they were asked to mark make to record their findings.

Bellow are some of the items we were exploring along with our drawings and comments.

First up was a woolly glove! We took it in turn to feel inside the bag and make our predictions. Then we drew pictures to record what we thought it could be.

“It feels soft”

“It’s a glove I can feel the fingers”

“It can be a hat”

“It’s not hard it’s soft”

Next up was a feather! Again we used our senses to explore inside the bag and mark make to record our findings.

“It’s a feather I can feel the soft parts”

“It’s got a sharp spiky bit”

“It’s really fluffy”

The last thing we explored inside the bag was a carrot! Lots of discussion took place to decide what it could be. 

“It’s not mushy it’s hard”

“It’s a cold carrot from the kitchen”

“It’s got lines on it I can feel them”

”it could be a banana”

Well done everyone! lots of amazing descriptive words used and lots of amazing drawing to recording our findings. The group managed to identify all the items inside the bag.  They worked together as a team to share our predictions and make decisions.

What sense will we explore next?

Digital Technology, Literacy, Technologies

What animals can you hear?

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Today in the noisy quiet room the children took part in a listening activity. Following our current interest of ‘the farm’ we tested our knowledge of what animal sounds we could identify. These included farm animals and other animals in the wider world.   


Using an animal sounds CD and matching picture cards we got to work. First we looked at the animal card and identified the animal. Then together we made the sound we thought it would make. Next we listed to the animal sound on the CD to see if we were correct.  We all used our voices to make some really good animal sounds.

Once we were more familiar with the animal sounds we decided to challenge ourselves a little more.   This time we played the sound first and then selected what animal it was from the cards displayed. We worked together as a team to identify all the animals displayed.

“I think it’s a guinea pig”

“Cow”

“It’s a big rooster”

“That’s a turkey, it’s like a chicken”

Everyone did a fantastic job using their listening and talking skills to develop their knowledge of animal sounds. Well done everyone!

Expressive Arts, Technologies

Cart Mill Engineers

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Today the children have been very busy in the Construction area.

They used their team working skills to discuss and create a plan to build a new bridge and roads.

They spoke about the different shapes and sizes of the blocks and how they would join together so that the road didn’t have ‘bumps’ on it .

“You need big muscles to be able to carry the big blocks”

“This block is wider than that one”

“We can make a ramp so the cars can go up and down,  the car can’t jump up”

They added in ‘funny shaped blocks’ to create  roundabouts for the cars to go round.

Once all the pieces were joined together for the road, they looked for bigger blocks for the bridge.

“This big one can be the start of the bridge and then we’ll add 4 bigger ones it will be so tall”

The children used their problem solving skills as they worked together to make the roads and bridge safe for the cars to drive on. They carried out a test run and a final check, then the bridge was complete.

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Technologies

Developing our fine motor skills

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Today the children have been developing their fine motor skills in a variety of ways.

Fine motor skills is the coordination of small muscles in movement with the eyes, hands and fingers.


We played a game called ‘Pickle Pop’ where the children had to use their hand muscles by moving the pickle with their finger to pop the bubbles.

“ I have to move it over there to catch the bubble”


We put shaving foam on the light board and used our hands and  fingers to draw shapes and make patterns. This provides children with the opportunity to strengthen their hand muscles and hand eye coordination.

“ The thread goes  up and down ”

“ I made a line through it”

 

We spent some time at the mark making table where the children drew pictures, copied and continued shape and number patterns.

Social Studies, Technologies

The floor is lava

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Today the children played  “The floor is lava” but with a twist…

They worked together to collect different materials including:

  • Paper/card
  • lollipop sticks
  • twigs
  • Small figures
  • building blocks
  • Cars
  • Bowls

They then used the materials to design and build a stable structure together that was suitable to save the little figures and cars from the lava without it falling over.

“It needs to be up high, what can we use?”

”we can use the blocks to get it high”


The children came up with a variety of ways to save the cars and people from the lava while developing their listening and teamwork skills.

They used their problem solving skills to organise the different shaped blocks by size so that the figure didn’t fall over.

”The big ones need to go to the bottom because they will fall if they are at the top, they won’t balance”

“The bowl can go under in case he falls”

The children had so much fun making a safe structure for the cars and people using materials around the nursery. Why don’t you try creating your own at home.

Digital Technology, Technologies

Our Maze Adventure

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Today in the Discovery room we have been busy learning about ‘what is a maze?’

We had a think about it and decided we should write down what we thought it was. 🤔 Here are some of our mind mapping ideas-

“It is round and you find your way out.”

”A maze is something you go in to.”

“You have to get in one way and another way out.”

The first thing we decided to do was look at different types of mazes and have a go trying to solve them out using our fingers to work our way around them and then we tried to follow it using our pens .

“These can be tricky!”

“Watch out for those dead ends!”


“My bee  is going to get the  flower”

We had so much fun exploring our mazes that we decided to create one for our Bee Bots, using our wooden blocks in a pattern.

First we created a route by using the wooden blocks to mark out the path. We used all our problem solving skills to identify and remove the blocks that wouldn’t work with our route until our maze was complete – not forgetting to add in some dead ends to make it a bit more tricky!

We placed the Bee Bots on the green circle that symbolised green is for go and start. The children pressed up, down, left, right buttons while counting the number of times the Bee Bot moved to direct him all the way through the maze.

The children had lots of fun and were developing their navigation, co-ordination, problem solving skills, social skills by taking turns and working as part of a team, following and giving instructions and developing their language skills by suggesting ideas and supporting each other. They also showed their ICT programming skills by programming the bee-bots to follow the route round their maze.

Why not give it a go at home, you can draw or make one and if you are lucky enough to have a remote control toy, you could see if it can get through the maze. We hope you have an a-mazing time!😊

Digital Technology, Technologies

Internet Safety

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Today in the Discovery Room the boys and girls have been learning about staying safe online. The children enjoy using the Promethean Board and are beginning to explore and investigate different things online so we decided we needed to find out how to stay safe while we were ‘surfing’.

We watched Hector’s World to help us learn about keeping our personal information safe, it is a very informative cartoon which helps us understand what internet safety means.


The children were very curious and discussed how Hector was able to stop his friend, the crab, from sending his personal information all the way across the ocean to lots of other creatures he didn’t really know, just to make new friends.

After the video we discussed that not everyone is your friend especially online. Even though people try to make friends with you, we don’t know everyone. Everyone spotted that Hector was a really good friend to crab as he suggested that crab should not to use his real name. Hector helped crab make up a user name to use which would keep him safer. Hector even knew not to let crab send his address to anyone he didn’t know.


We then discussed how we can keep safe on the internet. Some of the children said :
“We can ask our mummy’s and daddy’s or grown-ups to help us to keep safe on the computer”

“I have a password on my tablet so no one can play my games”
“My daddy has a password on his phone so I can’t get in”
“Passwords are used so we can keep our information safe”.

We discussed how some passwords are made up from our favourite names, colours and numbers so that we can remember them. We then decided to have a go at making our own favourite passwords up.
Look at our favourite passwords!

 
“Batman”

“Elsa“

Some were secrets ones so we can’t tell you 🤫

We had so much fun exploring and investigating how to keep personal information safe.
Why not visit Hectors World and his friends again at home and enjoy learning more on how to keep safe on the internet.

Technologies

Science is Magical

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As it is Science Week, we decided to get some help from the experts! We invited Miss Mortimer and Deanna over from the Science department at Williamwood High School. They brought lots of equipment with them so that we could become scientists for the day!

We heard that sometimes scientists had to wear white coats and goggles to protect themselves when doing experiments but we were not going to be using any dangerous equipment so we didn’t need to.

The first experiment we were shown was how to make marbling on water. Miss Mortimer explained that sometimes materials were ‘attracted’ to each other and sometimes they were not and they ‘repelled’. We had found this out when we had been looking at magnets and how they worked so the children said they knew that magnets liked things that were metal but didn’t like plastic cars!
We each picked a piece of black card, and Deanna put a basin of water in front of us. She then got a ‘pipette’ which Miss Mortimer explained was what scientists use to get small droplets of liquid. Deanna used the pipette to suck up some clear nail varnish and drop it on the water.

The nail varnish didn’t mix into the water, instead it sat on the top and made a sheen on the surface of the water! The children all got a turn to place their black card onto the nail varnish sheen and gently press the card into the water. When we lifted the card out, it was all shiny. We enjoyed doing this and all said we wanted to do it again using different colours of nail varnish.

The second experiment was AMAZING! Miss Mortimer explained that liquids moved about and that they fitted the shape of a container but she said that a solid didn’t, she told us our table was a solid. She then said there are things called gases and sometimes we have gas in our tummy that needs to escape!
Miss Mortimer and Deanna got a beaker of water and added food colouring. We chose blue. Then, we added some oil to the beaker. The oil did not mix into the water, instead it rose up to the top of the beaker and sat on top of the water.

Deanna then added a magic tablet (alka seltzer!) and we started to see some bubbles, the bubbles were the gases trying to escape! We could see the blue water bubbling up through the oil just like magic. We all took a turn of squeezing the pipette into the liquid to make our own bubbles. It was great fun.

We had the best morning being scientists. We loved our visit from Williamwood High School and can’t wait for them to come again. Why don’t you try creating these fun experiments at home, and if you know of any others then please let us know!