Tag Archives: #finemotorskills

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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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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.

“

‘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.

Outdoor Learning, Trips and Outings

Wednesdays are for Wild Raspberry picking 😃

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Today at Cart Mill family centre the children discovered wild raspberries on their nature walk. They talked about what other fruits grow wild in Scotland” I found strawberries when I was on holiday , they were really sweet” “ I like finding brambles on a walk they are big  purple and juicy ”  They collected the raspberries  and decided  to make them into yummy muffins.

The children looked up a muffin recipe in a baking book and decided what ingredients they would need. “We need flour sugar milk and baking powder to make them rise” “let’s wash our raspberries so they are clean ““We will need scales to weigh out our ingredients “ “ The children were able to name and weigh out their ingredients waiting patiently on their turn.

“ I need 150 grams of flour” It’s not sticky enough you need more milk” “ I need to put in two tablespoons of sugar “


The children used lots of descriptive language whilst making their muffins.  They are looking forward to tasting them at home , well done everyone.

 

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, 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!