Tag Archives: #creativityskills

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Halloween sensory play

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Today we were exploring our senses and developing our motor skills in our Autumn/Halloween sensory tray. We are getting in the Halloween spirit. đŸ‘»đŸŽƒ

This is a great experience for our youngest children to get in and explore different sensations on their hands and develop their hand muscles . For our older children it’s a great way to develop their fine motor skills and writing skills as they can use their fingers or a tool such as a pencil, paint brush, or other item to draw, write letters, or form numbers in the sensory tray.


“I’m drawing a pumpkin in the orange rice”

We added some cornflakes, pasta, leaves, conkers and some spooky halloween characters. We then added paintbrushes and tweezers to see what we could do with them.

”see I can pick the conker up”

“I can get the skeleton”


“it feels hard and crunchy”

”It sounds like rain at night time”

The children then used the buckets as cauldrons and made their own  witches brew while telling spooky halloween jokes.

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Home Sweet Home

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Today in the studio the children were exploring different materials to build and create models with using their imagination and natural curiosity.

Firstly the children noticed that we had some new material in our junk modelling area that was gifted to us by a parent at the nursery…

We discussed how the materials felt and the different patterns on them.

  

”This is a big one, its white”

”There is lots to chose from, some of them are bumpy”

”This ones really soft, like a carpet”

Then, the children decided that they wanted to use the material, along with the boxes in our junk modelling area, to create houses!

The children used different shapes and sizes of boxes to create their model houses, they decided that they wanted to use the various pieces of material to create curtains for their houses whilst discussing shapes and sizes of windows and doors.

”I had to use cellotape and be careful with the scissors to cut it”

”The house number is a 1 and a 5”

Two of our children even worked so hard together to create their house, and it was so big, they could even use it for role play!

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Indoor bug hotel

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This morning the children were exploring the mini beasts in the Discovery room.

They used magnifying glasses to inspect the bugs closer and commented on the different colours, shapes and sizes they could see and then they compared them to the pictures of the bugs.

” This bug is that one because its green and has 4 wings”

The children came up with the idea to build a bug hotel with small and large blocks from our block/construction area.  They worked together as a team to pass each block down the production line until the bug hotel was finished.

They tried to fit inside the bug hotel with the bugs but it was too small, so they decided to build a big house for them to fit in.

” this is a big house it fit us in”

 

Outdoor Learning

Super scientists👹‍🔬

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Today in our garden we have been super scientists! We decided to make our own chalk paint, so we gathered all the ingredients needed and got started. We used our problem solving and teamwork skills to follow the steps to create the paint. Firstly we added in the cornflour, water and then food colouring of choice.

The children then painted lonely designs on the floor.


“I’m painting my  mummy”

”Look at mines, it’s a funny face”

The children then decided they wanted to mix in different ingredients to see what happens, so we mixed in bicarbonate soda and vinegar and waited to see what happened.

“Wow it’s exploding”

“Mine looks like a volcano”

“It’s bubbling”

Expressive Arts

Let’s make music!

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Today in the noisy quiet room the children got creative with the musical instruments. In a small group we started by singing songs and playing our chosen instrument together.  We began to explore beat and tried to copy the beat played by Derek and follow along wile we sang. We all played beautifully and made an excellent band.

“Let’s do old MacDonald had a cat”

“Sing twinkle twinkle”

We then explored how to use the instruments to make different sounds. Learning new words like high pitch and low pitch, and learning how to make the instruments sound noisy or quiet.

“Twinkle twinkle is a quiet song play it just a little”

Then the group got creative and invented their own songs. We had “it’s time to go to bed song”,  “The snake in the hat song” and the “bumped the head song”.  They were superb!

We all demonstrated good turn taking and swapped our instruments  in the group so that everyone got a turn at playing something different. We all had lots of fun and can’t wait till we can do it again.

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Garden fun at Cart Mill

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We have been having lots of fun in our garden this week at Cart Mill. The children have been extremely busy and creative using their imagination in their play…

On Monday, we opened the ‘Cart Mill Cafe’ where macaroni cheese, chips and ice cream were the speciality! The children used various pots and pans, spoons and bowls and lots of mud to create their meals in the cafe. Throughout this experience the children were developing their role play and imagination skills and using real life experiences in their play.

What would you like from the ‘Cart Mill Cafe’ the next time you visit the nursery?

                              ”I’m making you some macaroni cheese”

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”I need to mix the cake, you scoop up the cake and mix it together in the bowl, it needs to go in the oven”

” Here’s ice cream, it has a flake in the top and chocolate sauce”

Then, today, we got a special show performance on our stage in the garden! The children treated us to a performance of ”5 little monkey’s jumping on the bed”. We had to be patient and wait for the curtains to open and for the show to begin…

”It’s nearly time for the show to begin”

     

The children had so much fun putting on a show for their friends, we even had some music on to dance along to!

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Who is that in the mirror..

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Today the children have been very creative in the Discovery room. They have used loose parts in many different ways.

After discovering their own reflections in the mirror they decided to use some loose parts to recreate their features using the different pieces.

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‘eyes and nose’

“that’s my face, I can use these stones for my eyes and this small one for my nose”

The children used the loose parts to sort and match by colour and practice their counting skills.

”blue like your eyes”

We counted together
 “1,2,3,4,5”

Loose parts are a great way for children to use their imagination and learn in lots of different ways.  They are able to arrange and rearrange, sort, match and create their own images focusing on the process instead of the end product.

Expressive Arts

Exploring the tinker table

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Today the children were exploring the different tools and wood at the tinker table and planned out what they were going to make and what tools they would need to make it.

“ I want to make a boat”

We discussed the safety rules we need to follow when using the tools and what we need to wear to keep our hands and eyes safe.

”We need to wear safety gloves”  “and goggles”


The children collected the things that they needed and got to work.

”I need some wood and a hammer and nails” “and some glue”

The nails are all different sizes so they had to measure against the wood to make sure the nail didn’t stick out the other end.

“I need different shapes of wood for my boat like the round bit for the sail, I need to glue it though because it’s too long”

“I want to use the hammer” “ This ones a bit tricky though”

They explored the different woods, some were softer than others.

The children are developing their hand eye co-ordination as they hammer the nails in to the wood.

“I want to saw this bit of wood”

When using the saw we mark on the wood with a pen which bit we would like to cut on so that it’s clearer to see the cut. Sawing takes large muscle movements when moving it back and forwards and develops Gross motor skills. “That was hard work”.

 

Expressive Arts

3D Sculpting in the Studio

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Today, we have been very busy showing off our creative skills in the Studio. We designed our own fabulous sculptures and combined clay and a variety of different art materials to create them.

We had lots of different materials to choose from such as foam shapes, colourful straws, feathers ,patterned buttons, ribbon and pasta shapes.

First we took some cold, squishy clay to make a base for our sculpture. We moulded it in our hands before carefully positioning and  setting our skewer to begin our creations.

We used good hand eye co-ordination while we were skilfully threading our chosen materials onto our sculptures. We demonstrated excellent fine motor skills, especially when it was a little bit tricky getting those buttons through the skewers!

”I like the feathers it makes it look pretty”

”I’m making mine all blue”

“I can put three bits of pasta together to make it taller”

”I think the buttons are a bit  tricky ”

We loved showing off our our final products and displayed them proudly in the studio.

Can you create some 3D sculptures at home ? You could try sculpting some creative art using junk from any recycling materials you may have.

 

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.