Tag Archives: outdoor learning

Shapes are all around

Our learning today consisted of shapes, shapes and more shapes! We started by using chalk to draw all the shapes we knew.

Then we used the balance beams to make a shape obstacle course. The children had to work out how many sides the shapes have and then collect the corresponding amount of beams. They did a fantastic job of creating a square, a rectangle, a triangle, a circle and even a star.


“The triangle looks like a tent.”

Then we took our learning indoors and went on a shape hunt inside the nursery. We used our worksheets to record each time we spotted a shape.

After all our hard work, we let loose by having a dance party. Check out those moves 😎💃🕺

UNCRC Article 29-
You have the right to education which tries to
develop your personality and abilities as much as
possible and encourages you to respect other
people’s rights and values and to respect the
environment.

The Bug Collectors

The children have noticed that when it is raining we find more worms in the garden. Today we decided to go on a bug hunt to discover what other bugs live in our garden. We started by reading the story of The Bug Collector.

We talked about all the different bugs in the story and which ones we though we might find today. The children also shared stories of their own bug hunts..

“I have a frog in my garden and one time a bee landed on my nose.”

“I saw a frog in the fountain at Greenbank Gardens.”

Next we got our magnifying glasses and our bug catchers and set off round the garden. The children said we need to look under things because the bugs like living underground. Look at all the worms we found…

We  decided to move them somewhere safe so “the birds can’t get them.”

Then we discovered lots of spider webs but we didn’t see any spiders! We thought they must be hiding from the rain so we decided to make our own. We looked at the story of ‘Aargh Spider’ to see what the webs and the spiders look like then created some beautiful bug artwork…

“I made a bed for my spider to sleep in.”

What can you find in your garden? Please share with us @cartmillcentre

Article 13- Every child must be free to express their
thoughts and opinions and to access all
kinds of information.

Muddy Masterpiece

Today in our mud kitchen we were busy using some new tools to aid us with our muddy masterpiece.
But first before we start, we used our independence skills to locate our welly boots from the shed and our puddle suit from the trolly. We put them on ourselves but Emma was on hand to help us if it got a bit tricky.

Now that we are suited and booted it was time for messy fun. We collected our mud and used some of our new tools. We used the rolling pin to roll out the mud to make mud pancakes.

We used the wooden masher, to mash up our mud and make it like mud pies.

We found a little worm who had sneaked into  in our mud, but we put him back home again. We didn’t think he would want to be in our mud pie.

We mixed it up and added in some leaves, water and grass and finally it was ready to be served.

We had such fun in the mud kitchen today, exploring our creative thinking, drama skills, and gross and fine motor skills.
After such a wet weekend it left lots of muddy puddles we couldn’t  pass by the opportunity to jump in them.

I wonder what we will create in our mud kitchen tomorrow?

Splat!!!

Today we have enjoyed using our gross motor skills to explore how far we can make paint travel. We filled bowls with paint and whisked it up with a little bit of water. Then we had a brilliant, if a little messy, time bouncing balls into the paint and watching how far it spread.

We needed to step back when we made a huge splash!


“It went off the paper!”

We discovered that the heavier the ball and the harder you throw it, the bigger the splash. This lead to some of the boys taking a run up before throwing to get more force. Great thinking!

All this splashing created some beautiful pictures, well done boys and girls!

One of the children even decided to experiment with using the whisk to splat the paint rather than the balls. It made a lovely pattern on the paper, “like rain.”

Next week we will continue to experiment with more ways to combine using our gross motor skills with our creative skills.

 

Shell-tastic Friday!

Today in the garden the children have enjoyed exploring our magic bag full of special shells! No peaking!

We looked closely and noticed that there was lots of different patterns, colours, textures and sizes. The children had lots of interesting observations about the shells…

“That’s like a unicorn!”

“Look, I made a wee clam shell bed. It’s for a pearl fairy!”

The children used lots of mathematical language while exploring the shells, it was interesting to see the different ideas they all had. Some children enjoyed imaginative play and others liked sorting them into different groups…

“They’re the biggest. Because they’re so pointy!”

“Let’s put all the wee baby clams over here. The big ones can go over here with the unicorn horns. This is the pink side!”

The children had so many descriptive words to describe the shells including…

“It’s swirly whirly”

“Ooooohh it’s so jaggy!”

Loose parts is a great way to explore many areas for learning as it is such an open-ended experience. You can talk about size, shape, colour, patterns and much, much more. Make it whatever you want it to be about! What loose parts can you find in your home to explore?

Have a great weekend everybody! 🙂

Wild walks

Today we decided to go for a walk and one of the children suggested we go to see if the river has been flooded by the rain. As soon as we crossed over to the wooded area we noticed how much the plants had grown and we had to walk like penguins with our hands by our sides to avoid touching the jaggy nettles and thistles. We found lots of secret paths but some of them were too overgrown to get through. One of the children found a secret path to the river but we decided it would not be a good idea to follow it in case we slipped into the water!

Once we found a safe way to access the river we had a great time watching it flow over the rocks, pretending to be pirates and jumping in muddy puddles.

On the way back to nursery the children noticed an area where some one had set a fire and the ground had hardened. They told me that there is lava and magma under the ground and we decided to make some volcanoes when we got back to nursery.

We had lots of fun watching the fizzing of the  baking soda and vinegar reacting!

Article 13- You have the right to find out things and share what you  think with others.

Delicious summer salads harvested fresh from our garden 😁🍓

Today some of the children noticed that our chard had grown “I wonder what else has grown that we could pick”

“Look the peas have grown big, Let’s pick some, I bet they taste good” “ I know we could make a salad, let’s see what else we could put in it”

“ Look there’s a big red strawberry it looks ready let’s pick it, but there’s only one ready” “ we could cut it into four, and have a piece each”

“Look I think the cauliflower looks ready, it’s to hard to pull it out myself can you help me ? “ Yeah sure” 1,2,3, pull.”


“yeah we did it”

” We could have carrots in our salad” “ My Mum has a sauce on her salad it makes it taste better” “I’m going to make a dressing “ “ I’m using lemon juice and oil”

“Mix,mix,mix”

“I’m cutting up the carrots small for our salad” “they are a bit dirty, I need to wash them”

“I think the dressing tastes lovely “ “My favourite is the cauliflower, I could just eat it all day” “ Peas, peas are my favourite they are sooooo sweet”

Well done children great team work glad you enjoyed your home grown salad🤩 I wonder what we could plant next?

 

 

 

Our Outdoor Classroom

It’s outdoor classroom day today! To celebrate, we thought we would share what we were learning in our Forest “classroom” today!

Our new skill today was whittling sticks. Whittling is a fun and creative way to introduce knife skills and is done by using a sharp object such as a knife, or in our case a peeler,  to carve wood. Using our knowledge, understanding and experience we have gained from our woodwork bench, we were able to transfer and apply these skills to our Forest classroom! We demonstrated this by listening carefully to safety instructions for using our “peelers”. It was very important to remember not to touch the “shiny metal bit” so that “we don’t cut our fingers”, and to hold the peeler “by the handle at the bottom”.


It was important to remember to keep a safe distance round us which we called our blood bubble! We decided it would be safer to take the peeler along the stick away from us “so we don’t cut our fingers”. Lots of wood came off and we could see “the stick change colour”.

While we were having snack under our shelter, we decided that we could use our sticks to “cook marshmallows on the fire” for our last week of Forest School next week.

During our time in our Forest “classroom”,  we have learned so many new skills. Each week we have grown in confidence and developed our gross and fine motor skills through a wide range of activities. It has been so much fun to make new friends and to work as a group and support each other’s learning.

By exploring different outdoor environments and engaging in energetic physical play, we have developed our movement and co-ordination skills and can now climb and balance on trees with confidence!


It was so much fun in our Forest classroom today and we can’t wait to see what we will learn next week!

“The best classroom and the richest cupboard is roofed only by the sky” (McMillan, 1925)

Article 15 you have the right to be with friends. Article 28 you have the right to an education.

 

Jump, Jump, Jump!

In the garden, we have been developing the skill of jumping! Jumping requires power and balance and children can develop this skill by showing they can bend their knees when landing, having their head up looking straight forward and using their arms to balance if they need to.

The children have been demonstrating their jumping skills from a height over a low beam.

They then increased the difficulty and the height of the beam and assessed whether they felt safe or not and as their confidence grew, the children were encouraged to jump from a greater height.

The children were able to guide their learning and decide how high they were able to feel comfortable and felt safe to jump over.

Some children then decided to use their problem solving skills and different materials to create a seesaw with equipment from the obstacle course. The children have decided that the next steps they want to take is practicing balancing and jumping on one foot.

What ways can you develop your jumping and balancing skills at home? Feel free to share your learning with us via twitter @cartmillcentre and email at schoolmail@cartmill.e-renfrew.sch.uk

Article 31: every child has the right to play and take part in a wide range of activities.

Tremendous Truck🚍 painting 😁


Today in the gross motor painting area the children self selected the trucks to paint  on the shower curtain  .“ I think we need some yellow paint “ “ I chose green paint, it’s a lovely colour. I don’t have any green cars at home just two grey ones “


“I’m mixing green and yellow, it’s turning blue” “ My car is painting fast” “ My cars tyres are painting yellow” “ look I’m making a circle shape with my truck”” My truck is going forwards and backwards , it’s making tracks”

The children are developing their gross motor skills, hand eye coordination as well as learning about colour mixing.
The children were happy with the end result of their art work. Well done everyone your art work looks amazing 🤩