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Welcome to the Cart Mill garden

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At Cart Mill, our children spend so much time outdoors!

Gardening and outdoor play in the early years can develop a wide range of skills such as physical development, hand-eye co-ordination, cognitive development, social skills and problem solving.

The children were digging and harvesting the carrots and the potatoes that we have been growing in the garden. The children are developing their awareness of the world around them, recognising different vegetables and using their senses whilst exploring different textures, smells and colours.

The children have then been exploring the different foods in the mud kitchen and learning how to be safe with kitchen tools.

The children have also been developing their gross motor skills in these art experiences outdoors. The children are strengthening their arm muscles by creating big movements with the large paint rollers developing co-ordination and body movements.

What skills will we be learning and developing next week?

Article 29: I have the right to an education

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Staying safe in the STEAM room

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This week in the Steam room we have been exploring all the different areas, getting  creative and learning how to use the tools and resources safely.

“We hold the scissors like this so we don’t get hurt”

The children’s imaginative play began in our block area, where they worked together to create a bed using the blocks, working out which shapes fit together and adding cushions and blankets to make it “cosy”. Their ideas then developed as they moved into our junk modelling area, creating  their own camping space using materials such as cardboard boxes and pens and jewels to decorate.

It was lovely to see how one idea developed naturally into another, with the children confidently leading their own learning through play.

To round up the week our mini scientists have been exploring colours through water play, developing early skills such as colour mixing/recognition , measuring, capacity and developing their fine motor skills.

What will we be learning next week?!

Article 36: I have the right to be kept safe

 

 

 

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy, nature, Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Classroom Day

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Today we took part in Outdoor Classroom Day. Learning in an outdoor environment helps to ensure positive intellectual, emotional, and social development whilst building the foundations for a lifelong connection with nature and our planet.

We have developed our throwing, counting and turn taking skills while playing the bean bag toss…

We have developed our literacy, drama and cooperation skills while re-telling the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff…

We have learned about the seasons and that we need to help feed the animals during the cold months while making bird feeders…

And we have learned how to keep the bugs safe in our garden by making a bug hotel..

We even found our first guest for the hotel- a baby slug…

Article 31- we have the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of activities.

Outdoor Learning

Hi from the pond

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Welcome to our Pond!  Over the last couple of weeks we have been settling into our new surroundings, learning our new routines and getting to know one another.  So far, a firm favourite for us all has been snack and lunchtime!  We are practising our independence skills by choosing which fruit we would like and are enjoying serving our own snack.

Exploring our garden has been lots of fun and we have enjoyed climbing, crawling and jumping!

Using our senses, we have investigated filling and pouring in our water tray, planting seeds for our garden (we really enjoyed mixing the soil to make our own mud), and making different marks and shapes in the sand.

It has been lots of fun so far and we are excited to learn and explore new things over the next few weeks!

 

 

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Literacy

Slime recipe

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I’m sure you are all aware that the children have been making slime. We have been learning the recipe and would love to share it with you so maybe you could try it at home.


In the mornings the children have been disagreeing about what to make at our malleable area. Some want to make play dough and others want to make slime. So we came up with a  way to vote to make it fair for everyone.  Everyone who wants to will vote by putting a tally mark in the box using the pictures to help. The box with the majority wins for the day.

“4 people want to make slime already”

“Only 1 choose playdough”

“Slime won”


They start by independently collecting all the equipment and ingredients  needed.

~ First step is to fill the jug with water

~ Add one cup of Pva glue to the bowl

~ Add equal parts water to the bowl

~Add 1 level tsp of Bicarbonate of soda

~Food colouring of your choice (optional)

~Add small amounts of contact lense solution (Asda one seems to work best) at a time.

~Mix until all ingredients combine and start to pull away from the bowl

~Knead until it not sticky. (This part is messy, the best way to get it off your hands is to roll the palm of your hand on a flat surface, it will gather and become stretchy like rubber rather than sticky.
The children learn so much from such a simple experience. Their fine motor skills are developing as they use their hand muscles to squeeze, roll and stretch the slime in different ways.

They are expanding their vocabulary as they describe the slime, what colour it is, what it feels like etc.

They are following instructions/recipes, measuring ingredients, colours, shapes…

…The list goes on.

“This is the best day ever”

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Crazy Hair Fun

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In the Studio Room we have been learning about the art style of Jackson Pollock.

We have been busy making our own abstract splat, drip and splash art using a variety of materials to create the splash such as droppers and spoons.

We noticed today there were some faces on the floor but something was missing “no hair”

We decided to use our learning of Jackson Pollocks splash painting to create the crazy hair using brushes to splat the paint.

This was so much fun that we thought why not recreate this outdoors in a larger area.

Outdoors we used chalk to draw the faces on the ground then explored different techniques and materials to create the wild and crazy hair, using a variety of mops, spray bottles, squeezing bottles and turkey basters, as well as large and small paint brushes.

This helped us to develop our gross motor skills as we used our bodies to make massive splashes.

We spoke about the different types of splashes each of our different resources made. We had great fun having more space to make the splashes go further.

We enjoyed expanding our learning across different learning environments to develop a range of skills for our 2-5 year old children.

I wonder what Jackson Pollock inspired art we will create tomorrow.

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Creative with paints!

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The children have been exploring various different ways to express their creativity in the painting area this week. The children were very excited to discover special waterproof paper in the art area, which sparked lots of imaginative ideas!

Some children wanted to draw their pictures first using chalk, and copying it with paints

 

Others explored fun patterns using different resources…

  

The best part is, as the paper is waterproof, you can paint and clean as many paintings as you like!

“Taadaa!”

The children were keen to take their paintings home with them, so after some wonderful suggestions the children came up with a solution.

“Maybe if I put it on the big paper, it will stick?”

 

“It worked!”

“Great idea! I’m going to try it too”

The children worked so well as a team, helping their peers with fun suggestions and solutions. Keep up the great work everybody!

 

 

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Block play

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Since the beginning of the new term the boys and girls have been exploring the block area, so far we have added farm animals which we have created pens for then we were able to sort using different criteria for example how any have four legs? How many have feathers? During this play the children have been developing socially and emotionally, this form of play supports language development as children describe their processes and narrate their play, as well as developing emergent writing skills.

 

“We need a barn, cows live in a barn” so we went into the studio and set to work painting and decorating our barn.

“Can we have dinosaurs?” So out came the dinosaurs which have been a great success developing even more language and imagination, we are learning about the different types of dinosaurs and using the iPad to look up the names of the ones we don’t know we are learning that some are carnivores, some are herbivores and some are omnivores.

“My dinosaur is in the cage”

”Dinosaurs live in the forest “

The children used the blocks to make a “ramp to get into the cave” and a “dinosaur castle”.

I wonder what we will explore next week?

 

Block building, Creative movement, Creativity, Imaginative thinking

All aboard the Cart Mill train!

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“All aboard the Cart Mill train”, has been the cry throughout another fun filled week!  Holidays have been a hot topic of conversation, with much discussion over where we are going on holiday and how we are going to get there! This has led to a natural progression of our interest in forces through using personal experiences to explore different ways of travelling from one place to another!

In our garden “the floor is lava!”.  Using our problem solving skills we worked together to design our own obstacle course so that we could travel across the “lava without getting on fire” by climbing, balancing and jumping! It was lots of fun to explore balance further through using our “wobble” board to move from sided to side and up and down! Using our knowledge of forces, we explored different ways to transport water to “put out the lava” using hoses, pipes and funnels!

In our discovery room and studio we have demonstrated wonderful creativity through designing our own mode of transport on our interactive board and constructing  planes, trains, cars and boats using junk modelling and a fabulous kit donated by one of our families.

“It’s a boat.  I’m going on holiday to Ireland on a boat with my family”. “I maked a train. I love trains. I go’d on a train”.

Trains have been a firm favourite and we have been so busy in our block area constructing our own “Cart Mill station”  and “trains”which have been picking up passengers and dropping them at exciting destinations! “The train leaving platform 3 is for Spain”.


“I maked a bridge for the trains to go under”.  “My train is East Kilbride”.

Role play is another favourite activity! This week we have made our very own “bus” which took us on a journey full of fun, laughter and much excitement “to school”.

“I drived the bus. To school”. “I readed  a book”. “Beep beep”.

Of course one of our favourite ways to travel around Cart Mill is by bike! Lots of us have bikes and scooters at home. Gail very kindly brought us some bikes in and we had so much fun investigating how they work and using real tools to take them apart and using our problem skills to try and put them back together again!

Of course we had to bring out our Cart Mill bikes so that we could race each other round our garden!  What a fun filled, action packed week! We can’t wait for more adventures next week.

Article 13 – Freedom of expression

Artice 28 – Right to an education

Article 31 – Leisure, play and culture

 

Special Event

Super Sports Day!

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Today was Sports Day here at Cart Mill! Excitement has been building over the last couple of weeks and we have all been practicing our favourite races!

It was very exciting to arrive at our sports area and see all our races set up by Chris, our Active Schools Co-ordinator.  Off we set to our first race.  After a quick run down of what we needed to do it was time to ready, steady, GO!!!

We ran and jumped over the hurdles and then ran back to the start to see who could finish first! It was so much fun that our families wanted to join in too! (Well done mums!)

Next up was our obstacle course.  We had to run up to the hula hoop, hop or star jump and then see if we could walk balancing a beanbag on our heads! It was a wee bit tricky but we took our time and demonstrated some fabulous balancing skills!

It was time for our flat race next! Some of us were a wee bit excited and forgot to wait for the ready, steady Go.  With a bit of practice, we soon got the hang of it! Who do you think was fastest!

Our final race was the egg and spoon race.  We are very imaginative here at Cart Mill, so we decided to have our own version, the tangerine and spoon race!

Of course what better way to round up sports day than  our super duper water slide!

It was so much fun to take turns sliding super fast down our slide.  We discovered if Val gave us a wee helping hand, we went even faster! And more bubbles appeared the faster we went (there’s definitely a science experiment in there somewhere!).
After all the fun it was time to head back inside for a quick change, ice pole and to receive our certificates.  We truly are sporting super stars!

A huge thank you to staff, Chris from Active Schools and to our fabulous families and children for making it such a memorable event.

Article 31 – the right to engage in play and recreational activities.