Tag Archives: #finemotorskills

Expressive Arts

Patchwork houses

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Thank you so much for all the kind donations of boxes and cardboard  for our junk modelling area. We decided to have a look in our Cardboard Creations book for some inspiration!   We loved the patchwork houses in our book and decided we would make some of our own!

We discussed what resources we would need and decided on:

“glue to stick things on”

“cardboard or boxes to make the house”

”scissors to cut things”.

”pens to draw windows and a door to get in”

”material, coloured paper and buttons to stick on”

We worked together to collect our resources and shared our thoughts on why we had chosen them.

”I’m choosing pink, it’s my favourite colour”.

”My favourite is red”.

”my favourite is red too”.

It was a bit tricky to cut the cardboard so we decided it would be safer if an adult used bigger scissors to cut it for us.  Using our smaller scissors helped us develop our fine motor skills, through cutting our paper, ribbon and wool.

Next it was time to design our house! We demonstrated excellent mark making and writing skills by adding our own features to our houses.

“I’m drawing windows. We need them up at the top, and at the bottom”.

”I’m drawing a door so we can get in and out”.

”I need a chimney, it goes on the top on the roof”.

”I’m writing number 23, that’s the same as my house”.

It was lots of fun choosing different materials to glue onto our houses. We used our knowledge to describe our materials and explain why we had chosen them.

“I like this one, it looks like a picnic blanket!”

”I like the pink one. It’s shiny and smooth”.

”The green one is like a tree, it’s fluffy”.

”The ribbon looks like a tractor wheel”.

”This one is black and white and it has flowers on it”.

”I love the blue one, it’s bumpy and has sparkles on it”.

”I’m putting buttons on. I like the colours”.

The glue on our houses was still a bit wet, so we decided to put them up to dry. When we put all our houses together, we decided it looked like “a wee village!”

It was so much fun making our houses and we can’t wait to see what else we can create!

 

 

 

 

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What can you create?

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Today in the discovery room the children have shown an interest in our loose parts area. Some of the children were talking about the fireworks they seen at the weekend with their family for guy fawks night, so they created their own fireworks.


“It goes poooooof”

”So noisy I had to cover my ears”

“So high in the sky”

”Lots of colours”

“I’ve made a rainbow with lots of colours and fireworks under it”

Some of the other children made funny faces and little houses.

“My face is funny”

”My face is excited”

“I’ve made lots of houses, they are all different colours”

 

 

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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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. 👻🎃

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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Fun day Monday baking Scones 😃

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The Children are learning how to make their own scones .  Firstly we talked about what kind of scones we would make.

“I want to make cherry scones because cherries are my favourite fruit” “ I don’t like cherries so I don’t want any in my scones” “ I just like plain scones”

We then discussed the ingredients we would need.
“ I think we need flour and sugar” “ lots of coconut milk to make the mixture wet” “Baking powder for the scones to rise”
Then we used lots of mathematical language to talk about the quantity’s of the ingredients.

“It’s four scoops of flour and one small scoop of sugar” “ We need to measure out the milk in the glass jug it’s 100 ml”  “It’s only one teaspoonful of vanilla essence and one teaspoonful of baking powder that makes the scones grow” “ mm coconut milk smells yummy”
Everyone loved rolling out their scone mix, it was a bit sticky and stretchy!


Then it was time to cut them out and count how many scones we had.


The children did great turn taking and knew that the scones went into the oven for 10 minutes. “ I’m excited to see what my scone tastes like” “ The cherries look tasty”

Well done children your scones look amazing 😁

 

Literacy

Let’s Get Matching!

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Today in the noisy quiet room we explored table top games. The children selected a couple of games to play throughout the morning. These games focused on matching, turn taking and developing our social skills. Bellow are some of the games we played.

Snap

We played snap with picture cards. We took turns to deal out the cards and then started the game. Everyone did very well taking turns with our friends when playing.  When we found two cards the same we had to be very quick and say “SNAP! Everyone did super work and we have some very quick fingers!

“You need two the same”

“I’m going to be quick and snap them”

“I play this game at home and you need to get two the same”

Smelly Wellies

In the game of smelly wellies we placed all the welly cards face down and took it in turns to flip over one left and one right (green & red) welly to try make a pair. We had to test our memory and remember where they were. Once we found a pair we added them to our board.

“Turn them over and get two the same”

“You take one red and one green”

“Two the same is pair”

”It’s your turn next”

“I remember where my one is”

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Apple and Potato Printing!

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Today the children used some of the potatoes we had grown to make pictures printing with paint. They also used some old apples to make different patterns and shapes.
First we cut the apples in half using our safe knives. Even our younger children were very careful and sensible using the knives and displayed great cutting skills. This helps develop their fine motor  skills. Controlling the knife will help prepare them to master other skills like holding a pencil.

The children then used the chopped fruit and veg to create lovely pictures. They chose paint colours and got printing. Some children made different patterns using both shape and colour!

“I’ve made a colour rocket with apple and potato!”

“The apple print looks like a love heart! I love hearts!”

We had great fun in the garden with this activity and created lots of lovely art work too!

Snack

Berrylicious Muffins😁

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Today the children have been talking about the different  berries they know -the different delicious tastes they have , different shapes they have and different ones they have seen when they have been on walks or maybe out shopping.


We thought about how we can use berries in our baking so we decided to make some mixed berry muffins. Together we looked at the recipe and we then followed the instructions to make our muffins.

“We can use blackberries , strawberries and raspberries”


”I think raspberries will make them taste nice”

“ It  looks gooey and sticky”
We carefully took turns when measuring out the ingredients. We counted and  we showed we could problem solve  when we realised their muffin mixture wasn’t binding well. We had to add more coconut milk to make the mixture a bit more sticky.

Once our mixture was ready we spooned it into our cake cases. It was now ready for the oven! ,First we set the timer for ten minutes to check to see if they were cooking well.  After waiting patiently our muffins were soon ready!😋

When out the oven and being left to cool down the children noticed the colour of their muffins had changed.

“They look weird”   “ That’s funny they look different”  “ They smell so yummy”
They then realised that they had changed because of colour of the berries.
Baking is a great experience for developing hand eye coordination through mixing and spooning. Everybody felt a great sense of achievement from baking their own yummy muffins and were excited to taste them at snack time.
What yummy tasty treats can you make using different types of berries?

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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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.