Tag Archives: imagination

The Cart Mill Sewing Bee šŸ§µ šŸŖ”

We have been super busy today at the sewing area making a variety of fabulous creations. A group of children have now mastered using a needle after lots of practice, they are now able to join materials together and begin making their own creations. The children have been using technology for inspiration, drawing out their design, cutting and sewing together, further developing their fine motor and hand eye co ordination skills.

ā€œI want to make a cuddly elephant.ā€

ā€œI did it, can you take a picture to show my mum.ā€


ā€œIā€™m making a love heart pillow for my mum.ā€

ā€œIā€™m very good at drawing love hearts.ā€

A few of the children have been creating models at the tinker table and continuing on with their design at the sewing area, using their imagination and creativity.

ā€œIā€™m going to measure it on the bed.ā€

ā€œOne pillow is a rectangle and the other is a square.ā€


ā€œMy toys at home now have a bunk bed.ā€

We have also been having lots of fun practicing our sewing techniques at the sewing table, Great job boys šŸ‘

ā€œIā€™m going to cut a big bit of wool.ā€

Our sewing area is a calming place for the children to sit and relax, plan, get creative and have discussions with each other, developing their communication skills.

Today in the discovery room we were mostly building bridgesšŸ˜

The children decided they would like to learn a little about all of the different types of bridges. We used the Promethean board to research them and printed some pictures of famous bridges to use as inspiration to build our own.
We worked well together to create our bridge. ā€œLook this block is the same shape as the bridgeā€ ā€œWe are building Ā London Bridgeā€ Ā 
šŸŽ¶ London bridge is falling down falling down falling down my fair lady šŸŽ¶
Ā 

ā€œ Letā€™s use this blue material for the waterā€

ā€œ can we have some music to have a party on our bridge ā€œ

ā€My bridge is for monster trucks ā€œ

ā€œ I need to use two smaller blocks to make up the size of the bigger ones because there are none leftā€ Great problem solving!

ā€My bridge lights up when itā€™s darkā€ ā€œ It even has handles to stop you falling over into the waterā€

ā€œPizza delivery for the party on the bridge ā€œ Ā 
The children had lots of fun role playing on their bridges.

This week in the noisy/quiet room

Following on from recent interests, this week in the noisy quiet room the children have enjoyed exploring the farm animals in the small world area.

The children have been using their imagination and role play skills to create their own stories and play using the small world equipment.

”its Old MacDonald’s farm, there is sheep and pigs and cows”

”There is little cows and big cows, small goats too”

”My favourite animal is the pig”

The children have also recently enjoyed building with our wooden train track and talking about all the different places you could go on a train…

Ā  Ā 

”You could go to the shops or to a restaurant”

”I go on holidays”

”Trains go so fast”

Small world play is a great way for children to explore their imagination and develop their role play skills. It could represent a real life place like a farm or it could be a completely imaginary world.

 

Why don’t you try some small world play at home?

Halloween sensory play

Today we were exploring our senses and developing our motor skills in our Autumn/Halloween sensory tray. We are getting in the Halloween spirit. šŸ‘»šŸŽƒ

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 itā€™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.


ā€œIā€™m drawing a pumpkin in the orange riceā€

We added some cornflakes, pasta, leaves, conkersĀ and some spooky halloween characters. We then added paintbrushes and tweezers to see what we could do with them.

ā€see I can pick the conker upā€

ā€œI can get the skeletonā€


ā€œit feels hard and crunchyā€

ā€It sounds like rain at night timeā€

The children then used the buckets as cauldrons and made their own Ā witches brew while telling spooky halloween jokes.

Castle-tastic!

This week in the studio, the children have been showing an interest in castles!

When the children arrived in the studio room they asked for some music on the board, they decided on Disney music which has a castle as a background, this sparked some conversation about castles and the children asked if they could make their own castles.

”I know what we can do”

Some children decided that they wanted to stick things inside their castle to make it pop up!

”I’m making a draw bridge for my castle door”

We even made a sparkly castle… It was so much fun choosing different colours!

”I’m making windows for my castle, It has a big one and a wee one, at the side for the people to see out of”

The children have been very creative as you can see, I wonder what fabulous creations they will come up with next week?! As always, feel free to donate your un-wanted junk to us as you can see, it comes in very handy and our children love to be inventive with it!

 

3D Sculpting in the Studio

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 Ā 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!

ā€I like the feathers it makes it look prettyā€

ā€Iā€™m making mine all blueā€

ā€œI can put three bits of pasta together to make it tallerā€

ā€I think the buttons are a bit Ā 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.

 

Cart Mill Engineers

Today the children have been very busy in the Construction area.

They used their team working skills to discuss and create a plan to build a new bridge and roads.

They spoke about the different shapes and sizes of the blocks and how they would join together so that the road didnā€™t have ā€˜bumpsā€™ on it .

ā€œYou need big muscles to be able to carry the big blocksā€

ā€œThis block is wider than that oneā€

“We can make a ramp so the cars can go up and down, Ā the car canā€™t jump upā€

They added in ā€˜funny shaped blocksā€™ to createĀ  roundabouts for the cars to go round.

Once all the pieces were joined together for the road, they looked for bigger blocks for the bridge.

ā€œThis big one can be the start of the bridge and then weā€™ll add 4 bigger ones it will be so tallā€

The children used their problem solving skills as they worked together to make the roads and bridge safe for the cars to drive on. They carried out a test run and a final check, then the bridge was complete.

Let us entertain you!

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 Ā 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 Ā we made our very own puppets all ready for the premier of our puppet show performances.


ā€œ Iā€™m making a fairy for my storyā€

ā€ Sleeping beauty is my favourite so Iā€™m making Aurora ā€œ

Once our audience settled, we began our performances! WeĀ sat very patiently and demonstrated good listening skills while we all had a turn of being the puppeteer. For some stories we needed some Ā 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-tellĀ familiar and popularĀ stories using our own words such as ā€˜The Three Bearsā€™, ā€˜Goldilocks’, ā€˜Sleeping Beautyā€™ and ā€˜Jack and the Beanstalkā€™. SomeĀ 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!

Mark making with the Cars

Today the children were showing an interest in the different cars ,trucks and trains in the Discovery room.Ā  We decided to collect some items to see if there were different to do with the cars.

We collected:

  • “A big, massive piece of paper”
  • Scissors
  • sticky tape
  • Pens

We taped the paper to the floor but the children also wanted to tape the pens to the cars to see what would happen to them.

” The train drawed a line and then a circle”

They realised when they moved the trains and cars on the paper, the pens were leaving a trail behind them.

The children noticed that by using different sized pens that the marks were different sizes.

“It looks like my dads map of Scotland, with all the lines on it”

Mark making is an important step in a child’s journey in learning to write. This allows them to practice holding a pencil and learning to control their marks. This improves their fine motor skills and helps to develop their hand- eye coordination.

Mark making can also encourage creativity by giving the opportunity to communicate through drawing and using their marks to tell a story.

” My truck is going to follow the track to find the other cars”