Tag Archives: imagination

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Holidays are coming 🌲

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Yesterday in the studio the children explored marbling ink. They selected different colours to create their own unique art.


Adding the marbling ink to the water and swirling it around to make cool patterns, the children added their paper to the water and we all counted to 10.  After 10 we lifted the paper out and looked at patterns that had transferred onto the paper.

“ Wow! That’s so cool , my colours pink and yellow are on the paper now”

“ Can I make a Christmas card on mine”

“ Me too can I make one?”

We put our pictures over to the drying rack and left them to dry over night.


Today the children collected different things to create their Christmas cards.

Jewels, sequins, pom-poms etc were glued on to create lovely Christmas cards, the children cut out their marbling ink pictures and added to red card.


The children practiced their writing skills as they wrote out their cards. Some for Santa, aunties, uncles, mums,dads, brothers and sisters.

We hope everyone  has a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year🎅 🌲

 

Article 29 – I have the right to an education which develops my personality, respect for others rights and the environment.

Article 12 – I have the right to be listened to

Block building, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, Social Studies

“Let’s make the biggest train track in the world”

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We have been reading lots of stories this week and this has sparked some great ideas for the block area.

“I want to make a big office like that, I will need lots of blocks. My  mum goes to the office”

The children decided to choose their favourite book first and then make something from the book. We made a chart where each child ticked the side of their favourite book.

Fergus’s Scary night was the favourite! They decided on making a dogs bed for ‘Fergus’ to hide when he is scared.

“It’s triangle and square beds, Fergus not scared in here”. The children worked well together to build the dogs beds.


“We are building the biggest train track like Thomas, and a bridge look we can go under too”

Finally, the children built some of the buildings and structures from the story ‘All through the night’. “I’m building  the digger with a snow shovel that can lift snow and rocks, it has a train track under it”.

“This ones mummy’s office”

The children have loved creating things from their favour stories this week, using their imagination and problem solving to fit the pieces together.

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Spooktacular clay creations!

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Over the last week in the clay area, the children have been making their own spooky models. Using various techniques such as rolling, pressing and moulding to make their pumpkins and spiders.

The children used their curiosity and imagination skills throughout whilst exploring texture and manipulation.

The children used their hands to roll a ball to make the spiders body and to roll the spiders legs into ”sausage shapes”.

The children then decided they wanted to make their own clay model pumpkins for Halloween! We even created a whole family of pumpkins and some pumpkin lollypops for trick-or-treating!

Clay modelling allows children to develop their fine motor skills in their hands and fingers and hand eye co-ordination. This helps with children colouring, cutting and starts off the skills needed for emergent writing.

I wonder what wonderful techniques & creations our children will come up with next week..

Article 31: I have the right to play

Article 29: I have the right to an education

 

Literacy, Social Studies

DIY sensory emotion bags😀

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Today the children have been exploring emotions through their very own sensory bags.

We began by having a discussion about what kind of things we could put in our sensory bags while making the jelly mix.

“We could put beans in, they are squidgy”

“and cornflakes, my brother likes cornflakes they feel crunchy”

We collected a variety of different things to put in such as oats, cornflakes, shaving foam,beans, rice ,custard and jelly. The children helped to make up the custard by adding 200 ml of warm water (which we measured using a measuring jug) to the custard powder.

We used ziplock bags and stuck faces on them showing different emotions. The children then added each thing to each of the bags and closed the bag over.

Using their hands to feel and move the contents of each bag they were able to see the different emotions through the bag. They guessed what each one was and how it felt.

“It’s an angry face, it’s crunchy”

“ it’s happy face, it feels gooey”

”what’s that one I don’t know that”

As well as simple emotions we are beginning to look at more complex emotions.

”that is a surprised face, when might you feel surprised”

“ When someone pops a balloon  ”

The children have enjoyed learning about emotions in different ways. During this sensory experience they have been developing their fine motor skills when using their hand muscles and learning some new vocabulary to describe what they feel.

Block building

Block Play & Lose Parts exploration!

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This week in the block area, the children have been investigating various different ways to create models & use their problem solving skills, self expression and imagination to create their own models.

The most popular creation this week has been building bridges of various shapes, sizes, length and height. The children have been developing their social and emotional skills by learning to take turns and share materials with their peers.

Block play helps children to become more confident in social situations and create friendships through communication and taking turns. Some of our children used the blocks and included some of our lose parts to create a ”tea party” where they made ”chicken nuggets” for their friends and shared them out one at a time. Very imaginative!

In the lose parts area, some of the children have showed that they are able to confidently match and sort objects using their own criteria such as colour or shape. The children were able to collect specified groups of objects and are beginning to organise objects.

”All the circles together”

”Orange”

Article 28: You have the right to education

Article 31: You have the right to play

Digital Technology, Social Studies, Technologies

Our emotions😀😢🤪😱🫣🥱😡😳

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This week at the malleable area the children have been using their creative imaginations to mould our play dough into different things.

“I made a big worm, I rolled it with my hands”
“look I made my ear in the play dough, I lied down like this”

”I made a smiley face”

The smiley face sparked a conversation about the different faces we could make.

”can I show you my silly face”

The children used the iPad to take a picture of the different faces they could make, they even took a picture of Carly’s silly face but we won’t bore you with that.

Each child made a different face and we discussed what they were and why we might feel these ways. Using facial expressions we can begin to learn and recognise different feelings and emotions that we can feel and find solutions to understanding and dealing with them.

”some of the new boys and girls get sad faces when they just come to nursery, now they have happy faces”

We will continue exploring emotions in different ways at the malleable table, it is a very important way of communication especially for children as they don’t often understand their feelings.

Expressive Arts

What can we create with clay?

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Today in the clay area, the children enjoyed taking part in various model making, exploring different techniques to mould and design and also being kind and sharing with one another.

At cart mill we value the opportunities we have to make friends and be part of group experiences sharing our ideas and thoughts with one another.


We have been sharing and co operating with our peers and recognising how we can communicate with others in different situations.

The children then demonstrated how to use different techniques for moulding and creating in the clay area.


The children were able to create and develop using a variety of techniques in making things by hammering, rolling and cutting using different tools and materials.

The children then created their own models by using their curiosity and imagination to select different loose parts such as pebbles and sea shells.

”I made snails”

”My shells look like unicorns horns”

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Social Studies, Technologies

New and improved wormery

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Following on from our last up-cycling project, we can now say we have finished fixing our broken wormery.

The children have worked so hard over the past couple of weeks using the tools and their problem solving skills to put it back together. They worked as a team to decide what they would use and what tools would work best.

“This small bit is too small”

“ We could use this long piece of wood on the side”

“we need a little nail and a hammer to put it on we don’t want to break the wood in half”

“What does this do? it has a bubble in it”

We learned that the spirit level indicates whether a surface is ‘Level’ or ‘plumb’.

“What does plumb mean?” We researched it and found out that ”Plumb means that the surface is sitting straight, it is vertical” This meant that we could check the sides were running straight up and down. We also used the spirit level to check the wormery was level across the top and bottom. We found out this is horizontal!

Every tinker table experience is different, even if it seems the same. We learn new vocabulary every day and learn skills that we can transfer into our everyday life, especially as we get older.

Using a wormery for compost is an easy and environmentally-friendly way of turning food waste in to nutritious compost to feed your garden.

Now we just need find some worms to come and live in it and make up its bedding! 🐛

Expressive Arts, Social Studies, Technologies

Creative clay ⚒

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In the clay area today the children have been super creative and using their design skills and imagination to create models. We have also been exploring and using different tools and techniques to create patterns and prints on the clay…

we used lots of different loose parts to create some “birthday cakes” and sang happy birthday to our friends.

then we used different tools to copy and create patterns and textures on the clay, we practiced hammering, rolling and creating prints showing how creative and imaginative we can be!


Exploring with clay helps to develop our hand eye co-ordination and fine motor manipulating skills. It gives the children the opportunity to socialise with their friends through talking and listening to each other’s ideas and also work independently.

i wonder what creations we will make over the next few weeks! 🤩

 

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Brilliant Building

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Today in the block area, we have been using our curiosity, problem solving skills and imagination to create different models and explore our small world toys within the block area.

”Lets build a rollercoaster”

”it can be a house too”

”we have to build it big”

The children used their imaginations to work out design criteria and take turns to work together to construct their model. The children decided they were building a ”rollercoaster house” which had lots of different features such as lights and speakers! So cool!!

Some of the other children decided to explore our new small world loose part toys in the block area.

We explored role play with the dinosaurs and people figures creating our own small world stories. There was volcanos, mountains and lava!! Block play helps children to take turns and share different materials, develop new friendships and socialisation skills and co-operate with others.