Tag Archives: mark making

Languages Week Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

This week is Languages Week Scotland 2023 where we celebrate language learning and multilingualism in Scotland. This years theme is “Languages for a peaceful world”.

This morning the children came across some stories and we discovered they were in different languages. This got us chatting about what language we speak in and how not everyone speaks the same language.

“What does this say”

“That is the title of the story, “The tortoise and the Hare” written in Mandarin, Chinese”

”When I went to Italy I hear a different language”

“Can you say any words in Italian”

”No”

“What language is the Elmer book in?”

“The Elmer book is in English and Polish”

“ how do you speak to someone if they don’t speak the same language?”

“Say Hello”

We used the internet to find out how to say Hello 👋  in other languages and wrote them down so we could practice how to say them.

The children were developing their mark making and writing  skills as they wanted to copy the words so they can practice.

We can now say Hello in different languages to welcome our friends who speak English as an additional language.

Let it Rain ☔️

Today in the garden we spotted a rainbow in the sky. It sparked a conversation about the weather as it began to fade behind the big grey  clouds.

“It looks like it is going to rain, the rainbow is hiding behind the clouds”

”it rained lots and lots ands lots last night, there was big puddles in my garden I splashed in them”

“It rained so much I catched it in my hands, it was loads”

“How much rain was there?”

”I don’t know,just lots”

We decided to make a rain gauge to see if we could measure the rainfall throughout the week.

We wrote down all the resources we need and made a plan then got to  work.

Cutting off the top of the bottle to use as a funnel we placed it inside the bottle and taped off the jaggy bits to make it safe.
We then added the tip of an old felt tip pen to the bottles to make it easier to see how much rain has fallen. We used red, purple and blue.


We split the bottle in to 4 sections numbering it 1-4 so when it fills up with rain we can measure it. We then stapled the bottles to the fence and are now waiting patiently for it to rain to see how much water we collect. Typically  it stopped raining as soon as we were finished making the gauge.

We will be keeping an eye over the next few days and recording our findings.

Mark making in the garden

In our garden, the children have been exploring and developing their mark making skills. recently, the children have been exploring patterns and different ways to make them.

At our provocation area, the children were using flour and paint brushes to copy and create patterns…

the children were also exploring mark making in the gross motor art area of the garden today by using the cars to create patterns on paper with paint…

Over the next few weeks, we will be developing our mark making skills through various experiences outdoors and exploring and developing our knowledge of patterns in our environment.

Hallowe’en Art🎃

Inspired by everyone’s Halloween costumes, the children decided they would like to create their own Hallowe’en art.

First of all the children picked their own materials to make their art, varying from black and orange coloured ribbon to Hallowe’en sequins and craft tissue paper in different shapes and sizes.

They then used scissors to cut the card to their preferred size and selected glue and glue spreaders.

“ I want black and orange card, they’re Hallowe’en colours”

”mines looks like a spooky Hallowe’en spider” 🕷

“I’m going to hang mine up like decorations”

The children have been very creative and have made fabulous pieces of Hallowe’en art.  Happy Hallowe’en everyone🎃


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. 👻🎃

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.

Today we had fun painting in the style of Kandinsky😁


Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract art he is known for his inventive use of of colour and one of his most well-known images was a colour study with concentric circles. The children decided to recreate this famous piece of art work putting their own unique spin on it. First
We went on a circle hunt around the nursery to find objects we could use for our outdoor Kandinsky painting. “There’s lots of different shapes in here look here are two circles we can use” “ Look this would make a good circle shape it could also be for a robots eye” “I have shapes we could use to paint circles on my tower” “ cardboard tubes would make good circles”

We had great fun using the objects we found to make our circle designs developing our gross motor skills. The children were very creative making their painting. “ I want to use the plunger” “ I think the cardboard tube makes the best circles” “


“Im using the blue paint and the tube to make a big circle then I’m putting a smaller one inside it” “Circles, everywhere big ones small ones and tiny ones too”


The children were excited about their finished art work and we all think it looks amazing. Well done everyone great team work 🤩

Kandinsky kids

We have been learning about different styles of art while developing our gross motor mark making skills and this morning we have been looking at the work of the artist Kandinsky. We discussed how the circles could have been created and the different colours he used. We noticed each adjacent circle was a different colour. Then we started creating our own using the mini mops and a selection of colours.


“It’s like a rainbow Easter egg!”


“It looks like a tornado. You’re going to get sucked in to it!”

Then we decided to try a different method and use brushes to make smaller circles.


“Look at all my spirals.”

Absolutely amazing pieces of art created and some good messy fun!

Creative Clay Creations

Today in the Studio we continued our experiment with clay. We have been learning about the difference in textures between clay and playdough, as well as the difference between wet and dry clay. So, today we took our learning one step further to investigate what we can make, by adding loose parts to our clay station.

We added some buttons, wooden sticks, paper straws, corks and our clay tools and markers as a invitation to spark the creative minds of our early learners.

We used our gross motor skills to roll out the clay, using the large rolling pins. We even tried using the other end of the rolling pin to make marks and indents into the clay.

Some of us used the clay hammers to create marks or flatten the clay to make it more malleable.

We each selected the loose parts we wanted and got to work creating our model, and look what we created! A hedgehog using the wooden sticks.

Others used the wooden sticks to make candles for a birthday cake.

We also created a robot, adding detail with paper straws.

We used the corks and wooden letters to make clay people.

We worked together to share our ideas and inspire each other.

We used our fine manipulative skills to select and place buttons onto our clay as part of our design process.

We even used the clay tools and loose parts to extend our mark making skills.
We learn best when we are having fun through play.
I wonder what will be at our clay station tomorrow?

Mark making with the Cars

Today the children were showing an interest in the different cars ,trucks and trains in the Discovery room.  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”

 

Christmas Writing

Today in the home room the children have been developing their mark making and early writing skills by selecting their own materials to write with.

The children have been so excited about Christmas and asked to write some Christmas words, which they were able to copy carefully.

 

We drew some pictures of the words we had written. We then decided to draw some beautiful glittery rainbows to take home.

We were so good at taking turns and sharing resources with our friends.