Tag Archives: expressive arts

Uncategorized

Castle-tastic!

Leave a comment

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!

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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!

Leave a comment

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 😊

Leave a comment

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🐥

Leave a comment

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😊

Leave a comment

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.

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Technologies

Water Xylophone

Leave a comment

This week is Science Week and we will be exploring science themed experiences throughout all the different areas in each of the playrooms.

Today in our music area we made a water xylophone using some glass jars and food colouring.

We were developing our fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as we used a pipette to pour the food colouring in to the jar after which, we added some water.

Once the children had added the water, they lined up all the jars and noticed that each jar had a different volume of water.

”that one is filled right to the top”

”the red one has just a little bit”

We used a beater on the jars to listen to the sounds it made.

”The blue one sounds really low and the red one sounds really high”

I asked if the children knew what made the sounds but they were unsure.

After searching the internet we learned that when we use the beater to tap the jar it causes sound waves which are vibrations that travel through the water to make the sound. When there is less water the pitch is higher.

We listened to the different pitches as we played our own music, we are going to collect some more jars to add lots of different sounds.

Uncategorized

Creative pendulum painting 🖼

Quote Leave a comment

Today some of the boys and girls decided they would like to try out a different way of painting. They decided that pendulum painting  might be fun.


“I want to make pink paint to swirl” “ I need lots of white and a little red to make pink”


Learning about gravity and the forces of motion and also developing our gross motor skills. We chose some suitable containers that had holes in the bottom to let the paint through. The boys and girls then self selected their own paint.

The children knew quite a lot about colour theory and understood that mixing colours would make different colours.
“I’m making orange paint it’s my favourite colour “ I know that red and yellow makes orange”

The children wanted two different surfaces to paint on a shiny one , We chose tinfoil and paper called news print. Then the fun began,  they poured the paint into the pendulum  and swung it backwards and forwards up and down fast and slow. “ It sounds like rain when it goes onto the tinfoil “ “look the colours are mixing the red and blue are changing green” “I’m making circles “

The children took turns swinging their paints and got very messy but they really enjoyed their learning experience. I think you will agree that their art work looks amazing. The boys and girls thought  that we could make our own pendulums next time using our studio room junk .  Well done everybody!!

Expressive Arts

Clay exploration

Leave a comment

Today we have been enjoying exploring the clay table.

The children decided to use some natural resources to make different models, we used some mini lollipop sticks, sea shells, sticks, little wooden slices, etc to create them.

The children found it tough to roll the clay out. So i asked them what they think clay is and what they think they could use to roll the clay.

“It’s play dough”

” It’s not Play dough its too hard”

” We could use a rolling pin”

The children used the rolling pin to roll out the clay.

“We can use our hands to roll it in a ball like this”

Clay helps to develop fine  motor skills as the children are using their hand muscles to manipulate the clay as they roll, stretch, squeeze it. They are also  using their gross motor skills as they use their large muscles to press down on the clay as it is tougher than play dough.

“look at the shell it looks like it is on my clay now”

We have been making different patterns too.

 

“I made some pretty biscuits, have one with your tea”

The children have been using their imagination to come up with different things to make with the clay.