Tag Archives: garden

Creative movement, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Social Studies

Dandelion tea in our mud kitchen cafe

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We have really been enjoying our mud kitchen area in our nursery garden. The children have particularly enjoyed the role play aspect of our mud kitchen.


We have been using the mud, water and utensils to create lots of wonderful muddy meals.  The children have turned our mud kitchen into the “mud kitchen cafe”. The children have been taking it in turns to  see who will be the cook and who will be the customer.  This has been especially enjoyed by our 3-5 year old children.

This week in our mud kitchen cafe some of our children noticed there were some dandelions growing in our garden and wanted to use them as part of the ingredients for their muddy meals.

The cooks got to work mixing, whisking and cooking the delicious muddy meals and daffodil tea.

We were using so many skills during our role play, such as gross and fine motor skills, creative thinking, imaginative play, problem solving and learning new vocabulary.

Once the food was cooked at the kitchen it was time to take it to the table to serve the customer

and pour the dandelion tea.

We also used our early writing and mark making skills to create our menu board to tell the customers what they could buy and how much it was going to cost them.

Our older children have been great role models for our younger children helping them to develop new skills and guiding them how to play.

Within our mud kitchen we have noticed the enjoyment the 2-3 year old children have gained from pouring and filling using the mud kitchen utensils. We set up a pouring and filling station on our tough tray in the mud kitchen to engage our younger children and follow their interests.

The children had so much fun using the water to fill up the different sized utensils and containers pouring them from one to the other or down the plastic gutter.

Our younger children were using their pouring and filling skills while developing their curiosity.

We had so much fun mixing and whisking the water just as if we were cooking in the mud kitchen cafe as well.

We loved pouring and filling the water so much we even made a puddle to splash in.

If our hands got too muddy and we didn’t like it we used our water jugs to wash away all the mud from our hands if we wanted to continue to play before going inside to wash our hands with soap.

I wonder what we will be serving in our mud kitchen cafe tomorrow?

Article 31 – I have the right to relax and play. 

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Street Art Garden. 🌼🌸🌺

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Some of our children have been commenting on the wonderful, colourful flowers we have growing in our garden.

This was the inspiration for our next street art creation in our gross motor art area in our garden.
We chose colours that we thought were like the ones we had seen on our flowers. One of the children wanted pink. Using our colour mixing skills, we mixed our red and white to make a pastel pink colour. We also mixed red and blue together with a little white to create a wonderful deep purple colour.

We made some flowers on our ground in chalk as the start of our street art creation and got our paints and brushes ready to use.  As we were using the ground as our canvas, we made sure we put on our welly boots and aprons to protect our clothes.

Now for the fun part. To get creating and using our gross motor art skills.

Some of our children wanted to use the paints to colour in the chalk outlines.

Some of our children wanted to design their own flowers using lots of different colours to create a rainbow flower.

We were enjoying having the freedom to create and use the paints in our design process on a larger scale.

We spoke about what kind of flowers we were making for our street art garden. We had Daffodils, Tulips, Sunflowers and even a Spider-Man flower.

Some children were finding their own spontaneous inspiration and created different shapes.

We even made numbers and fruits as well with one child creating a green apple and a yellow banana.

We had so much fun painting our street art garden in the sun and letting our creative thinking shine.

I think our street art garden looks as wonderful and as colourful as the real flowers in our garden.

Article 21 – “Your education should help you use and develop your talents and abilities. It should also help you to learn to live peacefully, protect the environment and respect other people.”

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Creating The Cart Mill Scarecrow!

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In our garden adventures on Wednesday, we dove into the beloved story of “The Scarecrows Wedding” by Julia Donaldson.  Inspired by the tale, one of our little minds proposed an exciting idea – let’s make our own scarecrow to protect our plants from hungry birds!

”The birds like to eat fruit so they maybe will eat our seeds”



Excitement bubbled as we brainstormed what we’d need, just like in the story we got to work and wrote some lists. These included:

  • Straw
  • Clothes
  • Hat
  • Scarf
  • Head 
  • Legs
  • Face

With our list in hand, we turned to the internet for guidance. Click the link to try building a scarecrow at home.  How to build a scarecrow

Today was the big day! We gathered our supplies and got busy.

First, we stuffed some old clothes with straw to make our scarecrow’s body. We made sure everything was nice and secure.

Next came the fun part – creating the face! We discussed facial features together and gave it some eyes, a nose and a big friendly smile. We also gave it some lovely Cart Mill branding. 

 

Once the body and face were ready, we used sticks from our willow tree to give our scarecrow a strong frame. Then, we proudly placed it in the garden to stand guard over our precious veggies.

As we admired our handiwork, one question remained: What should we name our new friend? Suggestions flew around, each more imaginative than the last. It came to a vote and we decided on Harry!

With our scarecrow watching over the garden, we wrapped up another day of fun and learning in our outdoor classroom. 😀

Article 13 (freedom of expression)

Article 31 (leisure, play and culture)

Article 28 (right to education)

Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Terrific tyre treads and painty patterns in the puddles

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In our gross motor art area in the garden we have been exploring art on a large scale.  So far we have used large brushes, mops, spray bottles and plungers. Today however we decided to make our art even bigger.

We decided to use the tyres to roll in the paint and see the patterns it made. We popped on our wellies and puddlesuits due to the rain showers we had this morning, and got to work creating our massive masterpiece.

It was interesting to see the different patterns the tyre made depending on where it rolled.

We had long tread marks and circles prints where it landed.

Because of the rain our patterns washed away quickly so we just had to make more.

It was a bit tricky at first to roll the tyre all the way across on our own ,we problem solved and thought,  how about making it a team effort.

So we worked together to roll the tyres back and forward to each other.  Team work made the art work!

We investigated who could push it the furthest and what kind of patterns did we make if we pushed it faster or slower.

We had so much fun with this large scale art outdoor experience. It was funny when the tyre splatted in the paint in the middle.

We tried different colours of powder paint to see which colours made the best pattern.

The rain got a little heavy at one point, but it mixed in with the powder paint and made our paint mix together and create much more paint puddles to roll our tyre into.

This was a great experience for our children of all ages to expand and inspire their creative designs, while also developing their gross motor skills.

We had our gross motor art tools beside us incase any one wanted to choose a different way to create art, but the tyre was the winner today.

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Muddy Masterpiece

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Today in our mud kitchen we were busy using some new tools to aid us with our muddy masterpiece.
But first before we start, we used our independence skills to locate our welly boots from the shed and our puddle suit from the trolly. We put them on ourselves but Emma was on hand to help us if it got a bit tricky.

Now that we are suited and booted it was time for messy fun. We collected our mud and used some of our new tools. We used the rolling pin to roll out the mud to make mud pancakes.

We used the wooden masher, to mash up our mud and make it like mud pies.

We found a little worm who had sneaked into  in our mud, but we put him back home again. We didn’t think he would want to be in our mud pie.

We mixed it up and added in some leaves, water and grass and finally it was ready to be served.

We had such fun in the mud kitchen today, exploring our creative thinking, drama skills, and gross and fine motor skills.
After such a wet weekend it left lots of muddy puddles we couldn’t  pass by the opportunity to jump in them.

I wonder what we will create in our mud kitchen tomorrow?

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Marvellous Mud

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The mud kitchen in our Cart Mill garden has recently been reinvented. We have added in a new work top to make all our delicious mud recipes on.  We have also introduced a seperate mud digging area. This provides a fantastic opportunity for our children to practice their digging skills and also somewhere for them to collect all the mud they need as part of their mud kitchen experience.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped change our area. The children have loved having more space to play and dig. I wonder what muddy creations will be made in our new mud kitchen?
During stay and play why not come and join us in our mud kitchen but don’t forget your welly boots it can get a little messy. Mud has so many benefits including building strong connections with nature. It also holds microscopic bacteria which scientific studies have shown make you happier. It helps develop a strong immune system and encourages a highly stimulated and active brain function but most of all mud is FUN!

In our new mud kitchen this week we have been exploring puddles.  The rain came and made quite a few large puddles in our garden. We got on our puddle suits and wellies and went to play.

We have been jumping and splashing in the puddles. We have been using new language such “squelchy” “sticky” “splash” “jump” and “mucky” to describe the muddy puddles.

We enjoyed the sounds the splashing made as we jumped into the puddles.

Some of the children were inspired by the puddles to work together to make scrumptious “chocolate mud soup”

It was hard work collecting all the ingredients to make the soup and stir it all together. Let’s hope it tastes as good as it looks…..

We were also using the mud kitchen to make and investigate more objects. Such as pouring and filling from the tea pots.

We also used the kitchen to cook our creations in the microwave or in the pots and pans….

Can I also ask as a polite reminder if you haven’t brought in a puddle suit or welly boots please do so with your child’s name clearly labelled on them. We have storage for both welly boots and puddle suits if you wish to leave them here. This just ensures your child is always ready and appropriately dressed for our muddy play.
Thank you.
Please  feel free to  check out our mud kitchen floor book for more messy fun experiences. It’s been so much fun in our muddy mud kitchen so far this week. We even have a chance to find a stick to go fishing in the puddle. I wonder what adventurers we will have in our mud kitchen next….

Outdoor Learning

Frosty Fun ❄️

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It’s been a cold and frosty morning in our garden this week. We have wrapped up warm and have been taking a winter walk around our garden exploring the frost and ice in our garden.

We have seen some frozen spiderwebs on our play house and enjoyed looking at the patterns the spider had created in his web.

We found icicles on our bike wheel they were very cold to touch but looked really interesting with different sizes and shapes of icicles .

We listened to the sound of the ice and grit crunch under our feet as we walked.
We discovered our obstacle course was all covered in frost and had to be extra careful. We learned how to risk asses our own play.

Our water tub was full of ice chunks we could pick up and investigate.

Today we decided we wanted to play In the snow. So we made our own. We used a mixture of shaving foam and cornflour to create snow.
 
It was fun mixing the shaving foam and cornflour together but it was a little messy but we love getting messy.


When we made our snow some of our children were mark making in it, creating shapes, patterns or even making letters.

“ I can make a snowman”

”Its’s cold like real snow”

“You can make a snow storm”

Some of our children used paint brushes to create marks and patterns.

Some of our children wanted to use different shape and sized containers to try pouring and filling the snow and transporting them to different places.
It’s been a different week in our garden this week but we still had the best kind of fun.
I wonder what the weather will look like in our garden next week? Will there be real snow for us to play in?