Tag Archives: creativity

Creativity, Literacy

Billy’s Bucket

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Today we enjoyed the book Billy’s Bucket, a story about a boy who wanted a bucket for his birthday! Using his wonderful imagination, he described all the exciting events that happened and the sea creatures that came to visit. After reading our story we decided to  design our own buckets…

Then we thought about all the creatures we wanted in our own buckets….sharks, whales, sea lions!!

We thought our bucket was too little so we made an even bigger one in our water tray.  After lots of discussion, problem solving and decision making, we decided to make our water red!

Reading a story has helped us develop our literacy skills, fuels our imagination and creativity and allows us to share ideas with our friends.  We have demonstrated we can make decisions, problem solve, work together and lead our own learning.   😁

Article 28 You have the right to an education

 

 

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Number Stones

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Over the past week we have been developing a range of skills at our play area. From counting to recognising numbers, shapes and patterns, Gross motor skills and writing stories we have experienced it all. The children have been so creative.

I observed the children playing a game at the clay table, they were drawing pictures in the clay with different clay tools and asking their friends to guess what they had made. One child wrote the number 4 in clay.

“Guess what I’m drawing it has a shell on it” – A snail

“I draw happy face”

“I did number 4, cause  I’m 4”

This lead us on to writing numbers in the clay, we made number stones and decided to paint them lots of different colours. When the paint was dry we brushed over them with Pva glue and left them to dry. Finally using a black marker to make numbers stand out.


The children have used these number stones to lead their own learning. We have used our counting skills and number recognition to rearrange the numbers in order from 1-10.
They have played lots of different games with the number stones, one game involves the children laying the numbers out in order and closing their eyes 👀  I take one number stone away and they have to guess what number is missing. To make it more challenging we mixed the numbers up and before removing one.

“It’s number 4” Next we added in numbers 10-20 to add fun challenge to their learning.


“I’m doing it upside down and the wrong way round 😂”

Creativity

Creative with Clay

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The children have shown fantastic curiosity in the clay area this week, and have been expressing themselves in lots of different ways.

Some children investigated the clay tools, exploring what different designs and patterns they could make…

Other children enjoyed showing off their writing skills…

“I can do H for Hulk!”

Others explored their problem solving skills, paying close attention to the different shapes of the resources to capture their ideas…

”that can make the eyes because it’s round”

“I’m making a holiday park. The big round shell is the pool. This tall one is like a palm tree”

“These pretty buttons can make the petals. It’s a button flower!”

Clay is a fantastic canvas for children’s learning as it is such a holistic experience. Children develop their little fine motor muscles through all the rolling, moulding and squishing as well as engage their imagination and problem solving skills too when creating their models. It can be as educational or as fun as you want it to be! Great work everyone 😁👍

 

 

 

 

 

Creativity, Digital Technology, Expressive Arts

Play dough shapes and numbers….

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At the play dough table our children are always very busy . This week we have tried forming the dough into shapes, numbers and patterns. The children drew some patterns that we could use with the play dough.

Play dough gives the children an excellent opportunity to develop fine motor skills and strengthen the muscles in their fingers and hands.

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We used our hands ,fingers and rolling pins to help make the shapes for the numbers. “It’s very soft”  “ mine is nearly long, now it might fit”.

Some of the children could recognise the numbers that were written and  some of the children filled the circles  with play dough to count to the number . “I have two circles it’s the number 2 “

The children were able to recognise most of the shapes “it’s a circle” “ now it’s a purple circle”. Our children were very pleased when they completed a shape . “I need four pieces for a square”.

The children also enjoy taking photos of their hard work and record them in  their learning journals. This reminds us all of how creative the Cart Mill children are.

 

 

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Using our fabulous imaginations, the children  enjoyed creating their own patterns and designs!  We had lovely rainbows, cherry pies and so much more!   We are looking forward to many more play dough creations.

Article- You have the right to development and participation.

Expressive Arts, Special Event

Super Spring Crafts!

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It has been lovely to see the first signs of spring arriving at Cart Mill through our beautiful crocuses and daffodils blooming in our garden, which inspired some fabulous art artwork!

What better way to celebrate the arrival of Spring than to welcome our families to join us at our Spring Craft Event!   As ever, our children brought their creativity and enthusiasm and created some wonderful transient art, spring wreaths and some amazing artwork using their foot and handprints to display on our wall!


Of course we can’t forget decorating our biscuits, which were a firm favourite!

“I putted lots of sprinkles on mine”

”I love jam”

Family is so important to us at Cart Mill, please feel free to pop in anytime for a coffee, chat or to stay and play.

Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play.

 

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Perfectly Patterned Pictures

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We have really enjoyed making patterns in our gross motor art area. We have investigated making marks with a variety of resources. We’ve used plungers to make circle prints.

We have used a selection of different types and sizes of brushes to see what marks and patterns we can create with them, such as large paint bushes, rollers, sweeping brushes and scrubbing brushes.

After we used our tyres to make large patterns  we wondered what we could use next?

Luckily we got a special delivery. A new gross motor art tool to help us further develop our gross motor art skills.
We got brand new large pattern rollers.  We couldn’t wait to get a turn of them and try them out.
First we tried putting a large sheet of paper down to see what marks we could make.

We enjoyed rolling the large rollers in the paint then pushing them over the paper, but it soon got filled up and we couldn’t see which patterns we had made. We decided to make it even more fun by taking the paper away. To have a larger area to explore our patterns and progress our skills even more.

By using the ground as our canvas, we could go further, see our marks more clearly and change direction.

We needed lots of paint to extend our marks, we rolled our roller in the paint and set off.

On one roller we had stripes.

And on the other we had spots.


We created a wonderful pattern picture in our gross motor art area for every one to admire.

We all were engaged and enjoyed this experience. Everyone was keen to have a turn. We were able to wait our turn and share.

Now that we have investigated patterns in our gross motor art area next we will be looking at “Street Art.” We have added some pictures of local murals that are around Glasgow to inspire our children to create their own.

I wonder what Street Art we will be creating next?

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Reduce, reuse, recycle

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Over the past two weeks the children have enjoyed exploring different textures, sizes, shapes and ways of mark-making through expressive arts and design using their imagination in the junk modelling area. We love to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Through discussions and excellent teamwork the children decided to make an alien robot, they all put forward great suggestions as they talked about what it should look like, how many eyes will it have , should we give it horns shall we paint it and what colour. Our imaginations offered up some wonderful ideas  


All of this play helps to improve fine motor skills i.e. using and showing control over mark-making tools, using pincer grip (holding tools between thumb and two fingers) – encouraging pre-writing skills, using tape and cutting with scissors and all made out of recyclable household materials donated by yourselves.

The last decision to make is what shall we call him? We have a few ideas so we thought it would help to record our votes as tally marks so we got lots of input from all the children, so far Pickachu is in the lead!

We would also like you to have a vote too the choices are:

1. Robbie Robot

2. Andy Alien

3. Pikachu 

Which is your favourite?

You might just spot him out in reception where he will be standing guard over the next few weeks.

Creativity

Endless imaginative play in our water tray!

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The children have been using their imagination and coming up with suggestions about what they would like to explore and play with in the water tray. The majority of the suggestions have been about dinosaurs, so we have created various water tray experiences to allow the children to explore their imaginations and lead their own role play and characterisation within the water tray.

The children suggested using green paint to mix into the water to create a dinosaur swamp, we used various equipment and objects to bath our dinosaurs and used bowls as water for them to drink out of after a busy day of roaring!

Then, the children decided they wanted to add more materials for role play and small world exploration into the water tray. We gathered natural resources such as rattan balls and mini tree logs and we even found some green shredded paper that absorbed in the water to make some swampy mush for the dinosaurs to eat.

”It feels a bit yucky”

”its so squishy the green stuff, my dinosaur is eating it yum yum”

The children decided on blue water for our underwater animals, they even wanted to add some bubbles to it…the bubbles made it smell like lemons!

We used the jugs to explore pouring and filling, using different sized apparatus to explore different ways to fill our containers such as spoons, mini ladles, tea pots and a mini gravy boat!

”I’m making you a frothy coffee, the bubbles are all the froth”

”its full up to the top”

Water play provides many benefits for children in their early years. By exploring different objects in the water, it allows children to practice their hand eye coordination, their ability to hold and grasp objects which develops the fine motor movements in their hands and fingers.

We have also been exploring early measurement through water play. By adding a variety of different sized containers, children are able to explore volume, even if they aren’t quite aware of it yet. They are able to observe which container fills up with water the fastest and to provide challenge, count how many containers it takes to fill up another.

 

Article 29 – I have the right to an education which develops my personality

Article 15 – I have the right to meet with friends

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Creative little minds 💡

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This week in the clay area, there have been lots of creative little minds busy at work!

The children have had lots of learning opportunities while exploring the clay, and have shared lots of imaginative ideas with their peers 💡

Some of the children liked using the tools to create little intricate flowers 🌺

 

some children enjoyed creating shapes and patterns with various equipment…

Other children even designed little small world creations too 👩🏼‍🎨

“it’s a little island for the ninja turtles. I used shells so the water can go through under the island”

“let’s make a little tunnel for the cars “

While clay has many benefits to children’s fine motor skills, it also engages many social skills through sharing ideas, solving problems or even encouraging each other through conversation as they play and learn.

It has been so thought provoking and interesting to see how many fantastic ideas the children have shared, and how each child’s experience of clay has been unique and individual to their little personalities. Keep up the good work everybody 😁👍

Creativity

Pop a little Pancake

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Today we were talking about Pancake Tuesday and decided we could make our own pancakes with the playdough. We got our bowls and measured each ingredient  and used our gross motor skills to stir all the ingredients together. We added some vanilla essence  to make them smell yummy too.

“My mum makes pancakes”

“ I have pancakes in my house”

We then began creating our own pancakes  using the rolling pins and cutters  of our choice.

“ mine is going to be round”

”I am using the circle one”

 

When  we were ready we popped them into the frying pan some of the children like using the cooker  to bake them. The children then flipped their pancakes . While we didt this we sang pop a little pancake into the pan.

We then used a variety of resources sequins, pom poms to decorate our pancakes pretending they were various toppings.

“Nutella”

”Jam”

“Bananas”

“Strawberry”

Look at our delicious pancakes.