Tag Archives: creativity

Making Christmas memories

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,


Tinker Table Workbench

Over the last few months the children in the Discovery room have been practising their skills at the Tinker Table work bench.  The children have learned the rules of the Tinker Table and why these rules are very important to follow for their safety.  They created a rule book for the Tinker Table work bench to encourage them and others to put on gloves and safety goggles when using the tools in the tool box.

The children have been learning to use hammers and saws properly as well as learning that there are different types of saws and hammers used for different jobs.  The claw hammer has been popular for creating pieces using nails as well as the children learning that the claw can remove nails. The children’s saw skills have really flourished as they now know how to hold the hacksaw properly and use their body weight to make the saw move through the wood.

With the children’s skills improving at the work bench so too did their understanding of how to better construct their creations. The children decided that they wanted to introduce glue to the Tinker Table and with that came wonderfully creative pieces.

The children have now progressed on to drawing a plan first of what they would like to create. They are looking online at images, drawing it, then thinking of how to create it with the resources at the Tinker Table.

A wonderful plan producing a fabulous rocket.

The children’s pieces have all been displayed in the Tinker Table Gallery for several months now. The children decided that they wanted to close the gallery in December and take their exhibits home to stay.  I hope you are looking forward to seeing how creative your child has been at the Tinker Table workbench this year.

Exploring and developing our garden!

Today in our garden we have been super busy! The children have worked hard as team to create a fairy garden! Firstly they painted the wooden logs their favourite colour, we then explored the garden to see what other resources we could use then got started, creating it all by themselves using a variety of natural loose parts, Well done!






The children then decided they’d like to make a potion made from a mixture of water, mud, acorns , grass and leaves.  They had lots of fun!

The mud kitchen is a very popular area in our garden. It is an exciting, messy and creative area to play in. The children experience sensory and imaginative play as well as developing skills in numeracy, science, interaction and communication. I wonder what they will make next time! 

It’s beginning to look like Christmas

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.

Creative Toddlers


Today some of the toddlers got creative mark making, selecting their own paint colours and using large brushes and rollers, developing fine motor skills and muscle dexterity they even made their own natural brushes from recycled flowers.  They painted over different textures  eg Anaglypta , tinfoil, cling film, lining paper and  canvas promoting language development  about how the different materials felt. “That paper is rough” “the shiny is cold and smooth”The toddlers talked about the colours they were using and mixing. “ It’s yellow”  “ I like the blue paint best” “I’m making purple” They enjoyed using the roller and big brushes. “I want the biggest brush” “the roller is fun” The toddlers did great turn taking whilst sharing the resources.  The end result was a beautiful piece of colourful art. Well done toddlers!

Happy Diwali🪔

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.

Pumpkin Seeds

Today we reminded ourselves of our story. Pumpkin Jack. It was time to open our pumpkin and see what was inside ?.  “Its seeds”

The children enjoyed scooping the seeds out the pumpkins. They had great conversations about how slippy and slimy the whole process was. We gathered lots of seeds to make pictures.

The children were very create designing their own styles of pictures. We all picked our own paper, glue, pens and pencils . Using these resources helps the children develop their fine motor skills. “ I am making a big pumpkin “ and “ mine will have lots of seeds inside it”. We have some lovely pictures to take home , we hope you enjoy them as much as we did creating them.

 

Halloween Sensory Play



Today the children used pipettes to draw up coloured ink and then dropped it onto the paper. They then used a straw to blow patterns. The children noticed the colours changing as the inks merged. They also noticed that the ink behaved differently on different materials eg “ It’s more watery on the tin foil” “ It doesn’t make patterns on the bubble wrap”

The children talked about the colours they were using and which was their favourite they were able to work together and showed great turn taking skills waiting for their turn of the pipettes.

In preparation for Halloween the children asked for something slimy and gooey to explore. The children decided that jelly would be best. The toddlers helped to make the jelly on Thursday  evening, they measured and stirred following my instructions closely. The children then  hid some natural autumnal items and some not so natural inspired by Halloween in the jelly.

The children used all five senses to explore the jelly. Some used tweezers to take the objects out of the jelly developing their fine motor skills, others dived straight in with their hands.  The children used lots of descriptive language. “”So sticky and cold””Jelly is delicious “ I’ve got an orange jelly” “I see a pumpkin “”This one has a pine cone in it” “This jelly feels good it’s wobbly and wet” “A bug it’s hard and black” “let’s see how many flowers we can get out”” I see three spiders they are tiny”.

 

 

 

 

 

Volcano o’clock

Some of the children in the home room today were asking questions about the “volcano on the TV” which has sadly been on the news. We talked about what a volcano is and what happens when it erupts! We decided to experiment and make  our very own exploding volcano using a mixture of household objects to see what would happen!! We used clay, vinegar and bicarbonate of Soda with a water bottle. Ready… steady… blast off!! “The flames are very red like on the TV!” We also used a range of media such as  the iPad to research different volcanos from all around the world and see what the flames looked like. Maybe the children could look for some books at home about volcanos? Or other natural disasters? It could make for some interesting discussions! Let us know what you find. Good luck everyone 🙂

Transient Art

This week the children in the Home Room have been creating their own fabulous pictures with transient art.

‘Transient art is simply moveable art’. The children are getting creative using loose parts such as stones, shells, buttons etc, to create pictures using their imagination.

Transient art allows children to make a picture 100 different ways, rather than having 1 end product when gluing and sticking.

The children added blue playdough to their pictures and pretended they were at the seaside and the playdough was the sea.

“Look at the waves in the sea, they are very big”

They even made 3D pictures. “Look the bird is sticking out of the picture”

This experience can be explored indoors and outdoors and can often lead from collecting sticks, stones, leaves etc. when out a local walk.

The children had lots of fun creating their own pictures, why dont you have a turn at home, when at the park or out a walk?