Tag Archives: Creative thinking

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!😊

Expressive Arts

Ahoy ship!

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The children in the Studio today created a fantastic story which started with a cardboard box .

The cardboard box became a boat and then the sea was added using a blue piece of material.

Pink material was wrapped around and suddenly there was a fish in the sea with the boat.  Then some brightly coloured mermaids joined  the gathering.


Next a crab with great big claws came to join the sea travellers.


The fish, mermaids and crab danced around the ship and the ship’s captain shouted “Ahoy ship!” and the fish said “We are swimming to America!”

The children’s role play recorded in this observation was truly creative.  They used the materials around them creatively, they worked as a team to tell the imaginative story and they directed each other’s movements like actors in a play.

“Play is the highest form of research” said Albert Einstein and we can’t agree more.

 

Expressive Arts

Creating Silhouettes

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Today the children are  having fun learning about silhouettes “a shape or outline in a block colour with no detail but you can still recognise what it is”. The children had a look at some silhouettes on the board and then we were ready to create our own.
We chose one of the children to draw around . “Look how big I am”.  The children were very careful using the scissors to cut around our silhouette.  Some of the children wanted to draw around their own hands to make silhouettes. We then used black paint to cover our silhouette. The children worked very well together choosing different parts of the body to paint and sharing  the brushes and paint.

We then played a great guessing game using animal silhouettes . What do you think it is? “ a snake.” We learned new words today and had great conversations about body parts, animals and silhouettes. We are going to continue looking at silhouettes – look out for our silhouette creations!