Tag Archives: expressive arts

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Mark making in the garden

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In our garden, the children have been exploring and developing their mark making skills. recently, the children have been exploring patterns and different ways to make them.

At our provocation area, the children were using flour and paint brushes to copy and create patterns…

the children were also exploring mark making in the gross motor art area of the garden today by using the cars to create patterns on paper with paint…

Over the next few weeks, we will be developing our mark making skills through various experiences outdoors and exploring and developing our knowledge of patterns in our environment.

Expressive Arts

Hallowe’en Art🎃

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Inspired by everyone’s Halloween costumes, the children decided they would like to create their own Hallowe’en art.

First of all the children picked their own materials to make their art, varying from black and orange coloured ribbon to Hallowe’en sequins and craft tissue paper in different shapes and sizes.

They then used scissors to cut the card to their preferred size and selected glue and glue spreaders.

“ I want black and orange card, they’re Hallowe’en colours”

”mines looks like a spooky Hallowe’en spider” 🕷

“I’m going to hang mine up like decorations”

The children have been very creative and have made fabulous pieces of Hallowe’en art.  Happy Hallowe’en everyone🎃


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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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Castle-tastic!

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This week in the studio, the children have been showing an interest in castles!

When the children arrived in the studio room they asked for some music on the board, they decided on Disney music which has a castle as a background, this sparked some conversation about castles and the children asked if they could make their own castles.

”I know what we can do”

Some children decided that they wanted to stick things inside their castle to make it pop up!

”I’m making a draw bridge for my castle door”

We even made a sparkly castle… It was so much fun choosing different colours!

”I’m making windows for my castle, It has a big one and a wee one, at the side for the people to see out of”

The children have been very creative as you can see, I wonder what fabulous creations they will come up with next week?! As always, feel free to donate your un-wanted junk to us as you can see, it comes in very handy and our children love to be inventive with it!

 

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Let us entertain you!

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We have had a busy day in our Studio. We have explored our creativity and imagination through art and storytelling.
Using a selection of junk and art materials we  were able to build our own puppet theatre.


We shared and discussed what our favourite fairy tale stories were and who our favourite characters from popular stories were. We then listened to some stories before creating our own puppets. Using our great craft and motor skills when glueing, sticking, cutting and drawing  we made our very own puppets all ready for the premier of our puppet show performances.


“ I’m making a fairy for my story”

” Sleeping beauty is my favourite so I’m making Aurora “

Once our audience settled, we began our performances! We sat very patiently and demonstrated good listening skills while we all had a turn of being the puppeteer. For some stories we needed some  help from a friend to puppeteer alongside us as it got a bit tricky trying to hold all the characters at once!
We used our loud speaking voices to introduce our characters and the name of our stories we would be re-enacting. Some of us were a little shy and nervous to begin but when it came to our turn our confidence shone and we were able to re-tell familiar and popular stories using our own words such as ‘The Three Bears’, ‘Goldilocks’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Some of us were able to make our own stories up using our puppets we created.

Well done boys and girls you have been great entertainers! We all enjoyed listening and watching your stories and had so much fun with our puppet theatre, why not give this a go at home? You could make up your own puppets and stories!

Expressive Arts, Social Studies

Ready Steady Sew

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Today the children in the home room have been exploring the sewing area. We had a discussion about threading a needle and how it can be really difficult to do but once it is done we are able to create stitches on the sewing table. Together the children shared their thoughts and ideas on what to do next, as a group we decided they would like to try sewing something onto the hessian.


The children searched the sewing area and found a variety of different materials in different shapes, sizes, colours and patterns and they were able to choose what they would like to use.
Firstly they drew patterns on the material that they chose to sew on and, with a little support with they cut out shapes using the large scissors. We then used the hole punch to cut out holes in our material to make it easier to thread the two bits together, this needed a lot of concentration. The children used their hand and eye co- ordination while completing this task. At the end they talked to each other about their own creations.

“can we cut out love hearts?”

”I can thread my needle?”
We decided using the Hessain table was easier than an individual piece.


”I liked doing both”
“I cut mine all by myself”
“mine is stuck together”

The younger children have enjoyed threading the large buttons, they spend a lot of time doing this so we added some pine cones, sticks, pipe cleaners, ribbon and wool for them. The children needed a little guidance of what to do and before we knew it they were confidently picking materials to wrap, weave and twirl, all the time developing their fine motor skills and concentration.

Expressive Arts

Paper plate creations!

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Today in the Studio we explored our creativity skills.
We decided to use our imagination to transform paper plates into some wonderful colourful creations!

Our journey began when we thought of what we wanted to make- e.g  our favourite animal,  a tv character, a flower.

 

We had a great selection of different resources to choose from to make our creations such as types of paper, pens , pencils and lots of different colours.

We exercised our fine motor skills whilst strengthening our muscles as we cut paper carefully with scissors, used glue pots and glue sticks and stuck them down to our plates.

The children all had some fantastic individual ideas they brought to the Studio. We loved discussing what each other made their plate into and were able to describe and talk about what we did.

”I’m putting lots of spots on my ladybird”

“ I need a snorty nose on mine”

”Minions are my favourite , they are funny”

The children used good hand eye co ordination when using their cutting and sticking skills.

They  children worked  well together. They  understood and displayed good turn taking skills  and were able to demonstrate awareness of others needs.

“This is a bit tricky can you hold this for me ?”

”could someone pass me scissors?

Why not get creating at home – do you have any paper plates ? What ideas or wonderful creations can you make ? We’ d love you to share your creations with us.

 

 

Expressive Arts

Fun time, Junk time 😊

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Today in the Studio the children were inspired to be creative by some giant boxes kindly donated by one of our parents.

They decided to build a house complete with a back and front garden and even a chimney. The children worked well together planning how their house should look.


There was a lot of chat about what everyone had in their house and what they could use in the centre to replicate the items. Some of their ideas included;
“ look I have made the key to get into the house, I used a cotton bud and tissue paper” “I think I will make a table to have my dinner at” “ I think there should be two doors at the front “ “ The garden should have rainbow grass” “I’m going to make the grass with different colours of tissue paper” “ I want to make  a dinosaur room for my stegosaurus”  I think it’s snowing at our house” I have made a barricade to keep everyone in the back garden”
What wonderful, imaginative suggestions!

The children used team work and exercised their gross motor skills to move the big boxes to where they wanted them and working together, they were able to use their problem solving skills to keep the roof up.” Let’s put these supports into stop it falling down”  

The children loved using their imagination to make their house and spent many hours playing in it.  Great team work everybody, well done!

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Spring has Sprung at Cart Mill🐥

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Today we have been discussing Spring.  Some of the children were able to identify things we may see during Springtime.

“birds making nests”

“flowers on trees”

“Baby animals being born, Lambs”

“spring flowers in gardens and parks”

We have some lovely spring flowers in our playroom, the children decided they would like to paint them. We talked about the different types of spring flowers for example Crocus, Hyacinth and Bluebell.

” I seen bluebells in the woods”

“daffodils are my favourites because they are yellow and in my front garden ”

“I like tulips the best because my Mum has them at home”

We pegged our daffodils and tulips to a line and put mirrors underneath them. We noticed that we could see the spring flowers reflection in the mirror.

“I can see the purple tulip, I want to paint it on the mirror”

“I’m painting the yellow daffodils in the mirror”

The children enjoyed mixing different tones and shades for their spring flowers. They noticed the differences between the petals on the flowers.

“The shapes are different”

We discussed the different parts of the flower.

“that tulip has the longest stem”

At the end of the day the children didn’t want to throw away their creative work, so decided to print their mirror painting onto a big sheet of paper to make a spring freeze next week.

Well done, great team work everyone.

Expressive Arts

Colour mixing creativity in the studio😊

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Today some of the children chose to do some colour mixing learning experiences. They decided to use shaving foam and food colouring and see what happened when the colours mixed the children thought they would mix the colours using marbles.

First they found some big trays added some foam and then used the pipettes to add different colours of food colouring. “ Its turning brown” “ Its hard to mix the colours with all of the shaving foam” “ I need more red” “ We need to add lots of different colours for a rainbow effect“

The children then got some paper and pressed it down on the foam. “ It looks lovely like a butterfly “ The younger children particularly enjoyed the sensory aspect of the experience.

Next the children decided to mix some different shades of green, orange and purple using paint. They used problem solving to decide what to do if the colour they mixed didn’t turn out how they expected, they also took turns guessing about what colour they were going to make. There was lots of opportunities to use mathematical language, such as more and less.
This activity allowed the children to have great fun experimenting with cause and effect.  What a fabulous, busy day in the studio.