Tag Archives: imagination

Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Welcome to our mud cafe

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Today in our garden we have had lots of fun transforming our mud kitchen into a mud cafe where the children served up some delicious food!

Firstly the children worked as a team to create their own menu, the children showed great writing skills and fine motor control.

After the menu was complete it was time to open for business! The children picked what they would like to eat from the menu and our lovely ‘waitress’ took their order then off to the kitchen she went.


“I’ll have the ice cream and pasta please”

The children were super creative in the mud kitchen, working together mixing the mud, water and loose parts to make the yummy food.


“I’m making a delicious cake with mud and water”

Now it was time to serve the food!

“Here you go, the spaghetti is ready’

”It’s a little hot, be careful”

The children love spending time outdoors in our mud kitchen. It offers them many benefits such as exploring sensory play, working as a team, using their imagination and of course being outdoors, as well as many more. 

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Technologies

Developing our fine motor skills

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Today the children have been developing their fine motor skills in a variety of ways.

Fine motor skills is the coordination of small muscles in movement with the eyes, hands and fingers.


We played a game called ‘Pickle Pop’ where the children had to use their hand muscles by moving the pickle with their finger to pop the bubbles.

“ I have to move it over there to catch the bubble”


We put shaving foam on the light board and used our hands and  fingers to draw shapes and make patterns. This provides children with the opportunity to strengthen their hand muscles and hand eye coordination.

“ The thread goes  up and down ”

“ I made a line through it”

 

We spent some time at the mark making table where the children drew pictures, copied and continued shape and number patterns.

Expressive Arts

Paper plate creations!

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Today in the Studio we explored our creativity skills.
We decided to use our imagination to transform paper plates into some wonderful colourful creations!

Our journey began when we thought of what we wanted to make- e.g  our favourite animal,  a tv character, a flower.

 

We had a great selection of different resources to choose from to make our creations such as types of paper, pens , pencils and lots of different colours.

We exercised our fine motor skills whilst strengthening our muscles as we cut paper carefully with scissors, used glue pots and glue sticks and stuck them down to our plates.

The children all had some fantastic individual ideas they brought to the Studio. We loved discussing what each other made their plate into and were able to describe and talk about what we did.

”I’m putting lots of spots on my ladybird”

“ I need a snorty nose on mine”

”Minions are my favourite , they are funny”

The children used good hand eye co ordination when using their cutting and sticking skills.

They  children worked  well together. They  understood and displayed good turn taking skills  and were able to demonstrate awareness of others needs.

“This is a bit tricky can you hold this for me ?”

”could someone pass me scissors?

Why not get creating at home – do you have any paper plates ? What ideas or wonderful creations can you make ? We’ d love you to share your creations with us.

 

 

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Spring has Sprung at Cart Mill🐥

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Today we have been discussing Spring.  Some of the children were able to identify things we may see during Springtime.

“birds making nests”

“flowers on trees”

“Baby animals being born, Lambs”

“spring flowers in gardens and parks”

We have some lovely spring flowers in our playroom, the children decided they would like to paint them. We talked about the different types of spring flowers for example Crocus, Hyacinth and Bluebell.

” I seen bluebells in the woods”

“daffodils are my favourites because they are yellow and in my front garden ”

“I like tulips the best because my Mum has them at home”

We pegged our daffodils and tulips to a line and put mirrors underneath them. We noticed that we could see the spring flowers reflection in the mirror.

“I can see the purple tulip, I want to paint it on the mirror”

“I’m painting the yellow daffodils in the mirror”

The children enjoyed mixing different tones and shades for their spring flowers. They noticed the differences between the petals on the flowers.

“The shapes are different”

We discussed the different parts of the flower.

“that tulip has the longest stem”

At the end of the day the children didn’t want to throw away their creative work, so decided to print their mirror painting onto a big sheet of paper to make a spring freeze next week.

Well done, great team work everyone.

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Magic Beanstalk

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Today in our garden we had lots of fun making our very own magic bean stalk!

After reading the story indoors, the children were super excited and wanted to make their own beanstalk. So we did some research to find all the materials that we needed.

We placed a handful of cotton balls into our individual jars, sprayed them with water to dampen them and then, just like Jack we threw our magic beans into the jars. Now we all have to be patient and wait and watch, checking on them every day to see if they start to grow. Do you think they will grow to the sky?


“It’s going to grow so big”

“It’s going to be just like Jack’s beanstalk”

“I can take this home to show mum”

This exciting experience allows the children to observe the changes in plant growth over time and helps them develop knowledge of seasons and life cycles.

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Social Studies

Team work makes the dream work

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Today the children have been developing their team working skills during a variety of different experiences.

We played ‘Feed the Teddy’ on the Promethean Board and worked together as a team to count up to 5 cakes to feed the teddy.

“That’s number 5 like my fingers, I have 5 fingers”

“Teddy is eating 5 cakes”

Next some of the children worked on a new painting technique, they had lots of fun mixing different colours in the shaving foam, and printing it on to the paper. The children made their own individual pieces and also worked together making larger prints.

“hold this side, I’ll get that one”

“1,2,3 down”

Finally some of the children were working together to build a garage for the cars. They built ramps for the cars to go up and down, and roads for the cars to drive on.

“Can you put that long plank up there so the cars can drive down”

“I put this one up here to stop the ramp falling”

Children develop very important life skills when working as part of a team such as problem solving, leadership and communication skills which they will need as they grow into adults.

Expressive Arts

Colourful Fingers

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The children in the Toddler Room are always very expressive and creative so when we found some very colourful finger paints in one of the cupboards in the playroom they were keen to try them out.

At first they were very careful, using only one finger, testing out each colour.

They experimented with different colours, making swirls on their paper.

Very quickly they started to use their whole hands, feeling the paint between their fingers.

Its cold and squishy
Blue paint.

Small swirls with one finger became huge swirls and mark making with a whole hand.

Oh look at my colourful hands too
Pink hands

All the children had loads of fun painting with their fingers and hands and were very excited to see their finished artwork hanging up drying ready to take home.

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Transient Art

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This week the children in the Home Room have been creating their own fabulous pictures with transient art.

‘Transient art is simply moveable art’. The children are getting creative using loose parts such as stones, shells, buttons etc, to create pictures using their imagination.

Transient art allows children to make a picture 100 different ways, rather than having 1 end product when gluing and sticking.

The children added blue playdough to their pictures and pretended they were at the seaside and the playdough was the sea.

“Look at the waves in the sea, they are very big”

They even made 3D pictures. “Look the bird is sticking out of the picture”

This experience can be explored indoors and outdoors and can often lead from collecting sticks, stones, leaves etc. when out a local walk.

The children had lots of fun creating their own pictures, why dont you have a turn at home, when at the park or out a walk?

Outdoor Learning

Cart Mill Mini Olympic Games

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The children have been busy in our garden developing their gross motor skills.

The children were able to follow the instructions on the ground to develop their co ordination and balance, Hopping like a bunny and hopping on one leg like a flamingo

Once the children got the hang of this. They decided they wanted to add their own ideas.

“Let’s add some star jumps”

The children worked collaboratively using their imagination to come up with some great ideas to add.

“Let’s add a dancing box”.                  “Can we stomp like a dinosaur”.    “We need a shouting box”

We even added a love box at the end to and hug a friend and celebrate friendship.

The children had great fun using their own thoughts and ideas in this game. I’m sure we will be re visiting this again and come up with more fantastic ideas.