This week we are feeling very festive in the toddler room, we have  been busy creating lots of lovely Christmas crafts as well as Icing Christmas biscuits and adding some Christmas sprinkles.Â
We made Christmas cards for our loved ones, and also added lots of tinsel and sparkle to our very own Christmas baubles which I’m sure will be admired for many Christmas’s to come.Â
This Week in the Home Room we have been writing our letters to Santa.
We have been spending time at our writing station practicing our mark-making skills and looking at magazines with pictures of toys in them discussing what we would like for our Christmas presents from Santa this year.
The children have had great enjoyment at making their Santa List and getting to share their ideas with their friends.
Even our Elf was writing his list for Santa. The children wonder if the Elf will take some of our Santa Lists back to the North Pole.
We developed lots of skills during this activity such as mark-making, early writing skills, fine manipulative skills, and letter recognition.
Merry Christmas everyone from all in the Home Room, hope Santa brings you everything on your list.
Following the First Minister’s announcement, schools and nurseries will reopen on 5th January to key worker and vulnerable children only. Further details will be issued before schools and nurseries go back.
Our children have had lots of lovely stories to share with us of decorating their Christmas trees at home with their families. They decided that as we have our very own Cart Mill Christmas tree growing in our garden, we should decorate it!
After much discussion, we decided that we would make our decorations a little different using some of the beautiful pine cones that were kindly dontated to us. Of course at Cart Mill we do love a  little bit of sparkle, so out came the glue and glitter (sorry Michelle!)The children chose their own colour of glitter and ribbon and worked very hard to decorate their pine cones. We then had lots of fun hanging them on our tree. Doesn’t it look beautiful!
A few of our children chatted about the decorations they had outside our houses and some had “special things” on their front door. We had a look at some pictures and decided we would make our very own Cart Mill Christmas wreath. We had a look around our garden and decided we really needed to collect some “interesting things” to put on our wreath. The children remembered we had seen some leaves and pine cones at our Forest School site so we decided we would go foraging to see what we could find!
The children excitedly changed into their Forest School waterproofs and wellies and we set off, we were so lucky that Val and Blue decided to come with us! Our children had lots of fun foraging and found some beautiful confier foliage, ivy, rosehip and holly. This sparked lots of interesting discussion on how ivy grows up trees “to touch the sky” and that “holly is very jaggy so you have to be careful” and that “we must not eat berries we find in the forest” and ” we need to wash our hands when we get back” Great work boys and girls!
We were so excited to start making our wreath. We have been learning about patterns in nature and the children carefully examined all of our leaves and pine cones and spotted lots of different patterns such as “spirals”, “jaggy bits round the edges, they look like triangles” and that our leaves “have lots of different lines on them” you are so clever boys and girls!
We decided to “stick” our different leaves to some cardboard to make our wreath. The children correctly identified we should make our wreath in the shape of a circle. We decided this should be an adult job (with the children giving me some advice on how I should hold my scissors and that I should be careful). We decided to try and stick our leaves with some glue. We were able to glue on our smaller leaves but we needed to do a bit of problem solving as our conifer foliage was “too heavy and keeps falling off”. We decided we should try to staple on our leaves. We decided this was an adult job and that the children could help by “squashing down Fiona’s hand to make them stick”. The children chose where to place our leaves and of course they decided we must have some extra special sparkle and a great big bow! We had so much fun and our wreath will look fabulous on our outdoor stage.
Finally, yes it has been a very creative week in our garden, we decided to make one last decoration. Paper chains! The children demonstarted excellent team work, sharing and fine motor skills in threading our strips of paper, glueing them together and making sure everyone had a turn. Our children were so clever to identify their own patterns by using different colours in sequence. We decided to see how long we could make our chain and to see if it would stretch all the way along our garden. Our children proudly held onto their chain and they counted that it was 28 children long! Amazing work boys and girls.
We would love you to share any Christmas decorations you have made at home with us.
The children have all been enjoying watching the ‘McDougalls Christmas Party’. There has been lots of dancing, singing and laughing! The children particularly found the jokes from the Christmas crackers funny!!
‘What did one snowman say to another snowman?’
‘I smell carrots!’
’What did Santa’s little helper learn at school?’
’The elfabet!’
This certainly got us into the Christmas spirit!! We saw a cheeky elf, Santa and a Christmas fairy visiting the McDougalls. We had great fun doing the Hokey Cokey. It’s a big thumbs up for the pantomime from the children at Cart Mill.
We are so pleased to announce that Val was successful at interview yesterday and is now our permanent Depute Head of Centre. Well done Val 🎉🥳
We are so pleased to announce that Sarah Jane was successful at interview today and is now our permanent Senior Child Development Officer. Well done Sarah Jane!
Hi everyone. Val here. Hope you are all keeping busy. As part of our Blog we thought it would be nice to run a getting to know the Cart Mill team. So, today it is my turn.
During lockdown, I have been working from home and planting lots of vegetables in my garden but what else can I tell you about me?
I moved to Netherlee when I was a baby
I went to Williamwood High School so haven’t really travelled very far! I have 3 children, 2 sons and a daughter who all go/went to Williamwood too!
I don’t really watch tv but I do quite like keeping up with news and current affairs programmes like Question Time.
You all know I love being outdoors as much as possible, I speak French and my favourite colour is blue but what might you not know about me… well, I climb, hill walk and ski.
I used to horse ride and competed in 3 day eventing and won lots of rosettes.
I absolutely love watching football and have a season ticket for my favourite football team and I also play classical piano.
Something I’m sure you all know is, I am missing you all very much and can’t wait to see you all as soon as possible.
Stay safe and take care xx
We are pleased to share with you our most recent Care Inspection Report which has now gone live on the Care Inspectorate’s website.
The entire team here in the centre are delighted that the inspection went so well and that the inspectors got a real sense of our family centre. Thank you to all of our parents and carers who completed questionnaires and spoke to the inspectors when they were here.
The grades we were awarded are:
The Excellent grade for the quality of our environment is extra special to us as we place such a high value on children learning outdoors and in the forest. This is what the inspectors said
“The service were committed to providing children with valuable outdoor experiences both within the nursery garden and in the wider community. All of the children had continual access to the nursery garden and we observed them moving freely between the two areas. Outdoor clothing was available for all the children which meant they were not restricted by poor weather. We were impressed by how the children aged two to three moved confidently between the two areas.
They were supported by enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff who planned for and extended their interest, curiosity and supported them in taking appropriate risks. Children had grown vegetables to make soup and during our visit they were making crumble from rhubarb grown in the garden. Towards the end of the day several children toasted croissants on the fire pit.
The head teacher was a qualified Forest School leader and led a programme of woodland visits to local woods. She was supported by staff who shared her enthusiasm. All children were part of a programme of visits to a local woods, some had the opportunity to spend a day in the woodland. We saw that the staff team were skilled in leading learning outdoors and the benefit to all children of engaging in natural settings was clearly evident.”
Please click on the link below to access the full inspection report.
