Category Archives: Trips and Outings

Wild walks

Today we decided to go for a walk and one of the children suggested we go to see if the river has been flooded by the rain. As soon as we crossed over to the wooded area we noticed how much the plants had grown and we had to walk like penguins with our hands by our sides to avoid touching the jaggy nettles and thistles. We found lots of secret paths but some of them were too overgrown to get through. One of the children found a secret path to the river but we decided it would not be a good idea to follow it in case we slipped into the water!

Once we found a safe way to access the river we had a great time watching it flow over the rocks, pretending to be pirates and jumping in muddy puddles.

On the way back to nursery the children noticed an area where some one had set a fire and the ground had hardened. They told me that there is lava and magma under the ground and we decided to make some volcanoes when we got back to nursery.

We had lots of fun watching the fizzing of the  baking soda and vinegar reacting!

Article 13- You have the right to find out things and share what you  think with others.

Framing Winter

As our weather is crisp and cold we have been looking and discovering more about winter in the world around us and how we keep ourself warm during this chilly time. We asked the children what they knew about winter weather and got some lovely responses;

“It’s Cold” “

“I wear snow boots”

“My fingers go red”

“Frost makes beautiful patterns”


We decided together that we would enjoy exploring our local environment to see what effect the colder weather had on our world around us.

First we dressed appropriately for our walk, we put our warm jackets, hats, boots and some of us had cosy gloves to keep us extra warm .

We looked at how the trees looked a bit sad and cold as their beautiful big leaves have left them bare, some of the leaves were lying on the ground.

During our walk we collected some of the leaves, some sticks, twigs and stones to take back to Cart Mill

“Leaves are wet”

“ I have found the biggest stick”

On our travels we also spotted a deer and its family through the bare trees. We walked a little further and saw lots of sheep.
“Are there any baby ones?”
We discussed that baby lambs can be seen in the spring and that’s the next season after winter, so not long to wait now.

When we arrived back at the nursery we decided to create our own winter pictures using the resources we found. The children were very creative designing their own trees and snowflakes. A lovely way for us to show our fun winter walk time.

 

Colours walk

Today we have been learning about our senses and specifically talking about our sense of sight. We decided to go for a walk round the local area to discover what colours we could see. We started by creating a colours board we could take with us and made sure we could name each colour.

As soon as we left the nursery we noticed the green grass and there was a yellow buttercup too. Then we saw the yellow gate and the purple climbing frame at the park.

Continuing on our walk we noticed all the beautiful colours of the flowers.


“I see yellow flowers, they’re like sunflowers.”
“I can see purple! And there’s red inside them !”
“There’s lots of flowers in this garden! Look, different coloured tubs!”


But…. the best thing we noticed today was the big blue sky and the yellow sun ☀️

 

Local walk to Bonnyton House

We have been growing some lovely Rhubarb in our nursery garden over the last couple of months, and they were now ready to be harvested.

Yesterday we picked our fresh, home grown Rhubarb. We wondered what we could do with it?

   

We had to use both hands to pull out the Rhubarb as the roots had grown deep into the soil.

    

”Look, this one has a really big leaf”

We decided that we would go for a walk to the local Residential Care Home and drop some off to them as a nice Friday treat. Working with the local community is something we love to do here at Cart Mill and starting back our Intergenerational work is what we are looking to do now that Covid-19 restrictions have eased.

The children were super excited to take a walk over…

 

Intergenerational learning has many benefits and is where people of all ages can learn together and from each other. Intergenerational care is all about providing opportunities for senior adults and young children to come together in the same space and work together to gain new skills and knowledge.

   

 

 

 

 

Wednesdays are for Wild Raspberry picking 😃

Today at Cart Mill family centre the children discovered wild raspberries on their nature walk. They talked about what other fruits grow wild in Scotland” I found strawberries when I was on holiday , they were really sweet” “ I like finding brambles on a walk they are big  purple and juicy ”  They collected the raspberries  and decided  to make them into yummy muffins.

The children looked up a muffin recipe in a baking book and decided what ingredients they would need. “We need flour sugar milk and baking powder to make them rise” “let’s wash our raspberries so they are clean ““We will need scales to weigh out our ingredients “ “ The children were able to name and weigh out their ingredients waiting patiently on their turn.

“ I need 150 grams of flour” It’s not sticky enough you need more milk” “ I need to put in two tablespoons of sugar “


The children used lots of descriptive language whilst making their muffins.  They are looking forward to tasting them at home , well done everyone.

 

Visiting the library

We enjoyed a lovely visit to Busby library this morning. While walking to the library, we discussed what type of stories we like and which books we might choose.
Once we arrived we chose a book each and settled down to read them. We discussed what we thought the story might be about by looking at the covers then started to explore the books.

We enjoyed reading a story called There’s a Shark in my Bath altogether. I asked the children what they would do if they found a shark in their bath and they responded
“I would run away.”
“I would give him into trouble.”
“I would put him on the naughty step because he’s not allowed in my bath.”

Then Peter from the library also read us a lovely story about a Penguin.

We even got to dance like a penguin 🐧

Snow much fun!!

We were so excited to see so much snow in our Cart Mill garden today.  We had so much fun investigating how deep it was and how it felt to touch. We even made a Snow Angel!

“It’s cold. I’m picking it up and making a snowball.”

We are so lucky to have a large open space next to our garden with lots of hills which are perfect for sledging!

“I was going so fast”.

We had so much fun racing down the hill to see who could go the fastest! Sami joined in too but we reached the bottom before she did!

Next it was off to the Spider Park.  We decided to call it the Snow Park today!

We had so much fun playing snow tig and making snowballs!

We demonstrated excellent teamwork by pulling each other on the sledge round the Snow Park.  It was hard work!

Of course we have to make a Snowman on a snowy day!  We worked together to roll our large snowballs and found some sticks to use as arms. We made a big snowman and a little snowman.

“This is his head”  ” He has arms.”

After all our hard work it was time for snack. Of course we had to have some hot chocolate to warm us up!

We had snow much fun today!

Kung Hey Fat Choi

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!

 

 

Outdoor Sensory Area

We have decided to create a sensory area in our garden. We made a list of all natural resources that we could collect when on our local walk. We all helped to collect stones, sticks, leaves and pinecones.

“I found a big stone, let’s put it in the bag.”

Once back from our walk we made labels so that we could sort the loose parts into a section each.

The children then had fun working together to match and sort.

“We’re almost finished.”

”We need to collect more stones.”

Our sensory area is beginning to take shape and we have lots of great ideas for different natural resources we could collect to add to it.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas..

Our children have had lots of lovely stories to share with us of decorating their Christmas trees at home with their families.  They decided that as we have our very own Cart Mill Christmas tree growing in our garden, we should decorate it!

After much discussion, we decided that we would make our decorations a little different using some of the beautiful pine cones that were kindly dontated to us. Of course at Cart Mill we do love a  little bit of sparkle, so out came the glue and glitter (sorry Michelle!)The children chose their own colour of glitter and ribbon and worked very hard to decorate their pine cones. We then had lots of fun hanging them on our tree. Doesn’t it look beautiful!

A few of our children chatted about the decorations they had outside our houses and some had “special things” on their front door. We had a look at some pictures and decided we would make our very own Cart Mill Christmas wreath.  We had a look around our garden and decided we really needed to collect some “interesting things” to put on our wreath. The children remembered we had seen some leaves and pine cones at our Forest School site so we decided we would go foraging to see what we could find!

The children excitedly changed into their Forest School waterproofs and wellies and we set off, we were so lucky that Val and Blue decided to come with us! Our children had lots of fun foraging and found some beautiful confier foliage, ivy, rosehip and holly.  This sparked lots of interesting discussion on how ivy grows up trees “to touch the sky” and that “holly is very jaggy so you have to be careful” and that “we must  not eat berries we find in the forest” and ” we need to wash our hands when we get back” Great work boys and girls!

We were so excited to start making our wreath. We have been learning about patterns in nature and the children carefully examined all of our leaves and pine cones and spotted lots of different patterns such as “spirals”, “jaggy bits round the edges, they look like triangles” and that our leaves “have lots of different lines on them” you are so clever boys and girls!

We decided to “stick” our different leaves to some cardboard to make our wreath. The children correctly identified we should make our wreath in the shape of a circle. We decided this should be an adult job (with the children giving me some advice on how I should hold my scissors and that I should be careful). We decided to try and stick our leaves with some glue. We were able to glue on our smaller leaves but we needed to do a bit of problem solving as our conifer foliage was  “too heavy and keeps falling off”. We decided we should try to staple on our leaves. We decided this was an adult job and that the children could help by “squashing down Fiona’s hand to make them stick”. The children chose where to place our leaves and of course they decided we must have some extra special sparkle and a great big bow! We had so much fun and our wreath will look fabulous on our outdoor stage.

Finally, yes it has been a very creative week in our garden, we decided to make one last decoration. Paper chains! The children demonstarted excellent team work, sharing and fine motor skills in threading our strips of paper, glueing them together and making sure everyone had a turn. Our children were so clever to identify their own patterns by using different colours in sequence.  We decided to see how long we could make our chain and to see if it would stretch all the way along our garden. Our children proudly held onto their chain and they counted that it was 28 children long! Amazing work boys and girls.

 

We would love you to share any Christmas decorations you have made at home with us.