Tag Archives: playdough

Creativity, emotional literacy, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, nature

Superworm at Book Week Scotland 2024

November 29, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

Last week in our playdough area we were celebrating Book Week Scotland by reading “Superworm”.

Engaging with our favourite stories and finding joy in reading helps to strengthen our children’s literacy skills and comprehension abilities whilst having fun. Reading books with our children also helps them to enhance their cognitive abilities such as memory retention, critical thinking and problem solving.

Today we had the curiosity cube in our playdough area and who was inside? Our very own Superworm!

We made pink playdough and had a go at creating our very own Superworm. We used some of our dough disco moves we have been practicing to help us roll the playdough into a sausage to make our Superworm .

We found some googly eyes and some sticky stickers to add to our Playdough just like the real Superworm .

We enjoyed making our Superworm and some of our children even wanted to make lots of friends for Superworm.

We counted them as we made them, promoting our numeracy learning through our play experiences.

Our older children wanted to make different characters from the story. Some children chose their favourite baby toad to create.

We decided to retell the story of Superworm using our playdough creations. Some of us decided to change the story and create their own.

We had Super worm with his friends, Superworm saving the princess in the castle, Superworm with the zoo animals and Superworm the flying worm.

We shared our ideas with our friends and discussed different characters and events in our story. Storytelling provokes conversations between our children of different ages and stages of development.

Here is a look at some of our own Superworms.

We read the story of Superworm and used Superworm and one of our playdough toads to help retell the story.

“Superworm is super long.”

”Superworm is super strong.”

“watch him wiggle.”

”see him squirm.”

”Hip hip hooray for Superworm.”

I wonder what characters from our favourite stories will be in our curiosity cube tomorrow? Don’t forget to help yourself to a book at our front door to share with your children at home as part of our Book week Scotland.

Creative movement, Expressive Arts, Froebel

Let’s all go to the dough disco

September 25, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

We have been working hard in our playdough area to make the area fully self-service for our children. We have used visual aids to help our children know where all the ingredients are and what they are called.

We also have created a visual recipe board to give our children step by step instructions on how to make our playdough, to provide them with independence and a sense of ownership.

Even our younger children are enjoying this opportunity and learning the recipe.

Now that we have mastered our playdough making skills it’s time to work on our fine manipulative skills.
The “dough disco” is a fun way to move our fingers and extend our fine manipulative skills.
The dough disco teaches us some key moves such as,
“Squeeze it”

“Ball it”

“Pat it”

“Fingers dance”

Put all these moves together along with some fun music and it’s time to go to the dough disco, and get those fingers moving….

This is a great way to incorporate our fine manipulative skills while having fun with our playdough.

Theses key moves also help us when we are create models with our dough.

There are lots of dough disco videos on you tube if you would like to try it at home.
I wonder what we will do at the dough disco tomorrow.

Article 31 – “you have the right to play and rest”

Baking, Creative movement, Creativity, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking, Literacy, music, nature, Outdoor Learning, Snack, Social Studies

What have we been doing at Cart Mill this week?

July 5, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

This week at Cart Mill we have been taking part in a wide variety of learning experiences across each of our playrooms and our garden.
In our Discovery room we have continued along our Jack and the Beanstalk learning journey by investigating “forces” and “travel”. Our mission was to find a way for Jack to get to and from the castle without the giant seeing! To do this we decided to fill the balloon with air and let it go to see how far it would travel towards the castle. It’s been so much fun seeing how much air we need to make the balloon go fast or slow.

In our Studio we have shown an interest in diggers and have been using the water tray as our construction site. We used dried rice to represent the dirt and had great fun using the construction toys to fill, empty and transport the rice. We used our technology skills to look at videos of real construction vehicles on our smart board. This experience had such a great level of engagement from all our children, especially our younger ones. We even found a Danny go video called “digging in the dirt” to all join in with, incorporating our health, well-being and movements skills.

In our Home room we have continued to develop our baking skills by researching recipes, measuring ingredients and making yummy vegan treats for our afternoon snack! The best part was taste testing our baking!
In our playdough area we have been experimenting by adding different scents to our playdough. We’ve tried peppermint, lemon and orange extracts. We even tried chocolate powder to make chocolate playdough. It smelt so good and looked just like chocolate. This week we decided to wander out to the the planting area to choose herbs and flowers to introduce some different scents. We picked basil, thyme, garlic and some flowers. As we grow in confidence, we are able to make our playdough independently using our self serve playdough station. It has been lots of fun choosing loose parts to add to our playdough and creating wonderful models.
Between the smells of playdough and daily home baking our home room smells delightful.

And finally our garden! The weather has been a little varied this week with showers of rain in between the sunshine. As usual, we didn’t let that stop our fun! We have used the gross motor rollers to mark make, played role play games using the play house and even took part in music and movement games such as head shoulders knees and toes. We extended our muddy movers skills by playing catch with the sticky ball and catching mitts. It was lots of fun taking turns with catching and throwing.

We all love learning through our play at Cart Mill! I wonder what we will do next week during our summer adventures?

UNCRC article 28- we have the right to play.

Creativity, Expressive Arts, Froebel, Imaginative thinking

Colour Mixing Playdough.

May 30, 2024 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

We have been learning how to make playdough all by ourselves. The playdough area is a self-serve area designed to promote the independent skills of all our children.

We have been selecting our ingredients and we are learning about the different quantities of these ingredients that we will we need for our recipe. (Following on from the new government guidelines we have been using heat treated gluten free flour in our recipe).

All our children aged 2-5 have the opportunity to make their own playdough and enjoy doing so independently.

This week in our Playdough area we have been exploring and experimenting with colour mixing.
First we made our playdough, by each collecting the bowl, spoon and ingredients we needed. We each choose a primary colour to make our playdough to start with. We had red, yellow and blue.

We were able to see if our playdough was ready, by testing if it was too dry and needed more water or too wet and needed more flour.

“more water”

“Too sticky, need more flour”

”it’s ready”

Once our playdough was perfect we set up our playdough station and invited our friends to come and join us.

We each took a pinch of two or more colours and mixed them together to see what colours we could make.

We used our gross motor skills as we rolled the playdough together to mix up the colours.

We were amazed at the colours we were able to make.

“I’ve made so many”

“I’ve made pink and purple and orange”

We discovered that we got green by mixing red and yellow. Purple by mixing the red and blue. And a pinky orange if we mixed red and yellow. We even ended up with a rainbow playdough mix.

Once we made all our new colours we got to work creating playdough masterpieces using the loose parts.

“I made a unicorn”

“A birthday cake, blow out your candles”

We also used a variety of different tools to help us mould our playdough such as scissors

rolling pins

and even used the loose parts to make patterns

We have been so busy at our playdough station. I wonder what we will make tomorrow.
Here is some of our playdough creations so far….

Article 29 – I have the right to an education which develops my personality.

Creativity

Pop a little Pancake

February 13, 2024 Miss Simms Leave a comment

Today we were talking about Pancake Tuesday and decided we could make our own pancakes with the playdough. We got our bowls and measured each ingredient and used our gross motor skills to stir all the ingredients together. We added some vanilla essence to make them smell yummy too.

“My mum makes pancakes”

“ I have pancakes in my house”

We then began creating our own pancakes using the rolling pins and cutters of our choice.

“ mine is going to be round”

”I am using the circle one”

When we were ready we popped them into the frying pan some of the children like using the cooker to bake them. The children then flipped their pancakes . While we didt this we sang pop a little pancake into the pan.

We then used a variety of resources sequins, pom poms to decorate our pancakes pretending they were various toppings.

“Nutella”

”Jam”

“Bananas”

“Strawberry”

Look at our delicious pancakes.

Expressive Arts

Perfecting our Playdough

January 13, 2023 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

We have been very busy creating our visual recipe for our playdough station this week. We have nearly finished it, it’s a work in progress.

Our visual recipe board is to encourage our children to make their playdough independently.
Our playdough area has all the utensils and ingredients accessible to prompt the confidence and independence skills of all the children.

Today, some of the children tried out the recipe board for themselves.
The children looked at the board and collected what they needed. They looked at the numbers which told them the quantity needed and the picture to tell us the ingredients or colour of the measuring spoon.

The children took a bowl each and set to work to add each of the ingredients.

We added oil, warm water, gluten free flour, salt and xantham gum.

The children then chose which colour to make our playdough.

Today everyone wanted to make it red so that colour was added and mixed all together to form the red playdough.

Next the children put their hands in to knead the dough. It was a bit sticky at first so they added more flour.

Then it was ready to play with. We got the playdough tray out and got to work creating our playdough masterpiece.
We had lots of fun making aliens, people, presents and birthday cakes. We also were using the playdough tools to cut, roll and manipulate the playdough.

It’s a very popular area of our nursery, we all like to make our own and learn lots of skills and develop our hand muscles as we play with the playdough.

We are all very proud of the children developing their independent playdough making skills. The children were very pleased with themselves, doing it all independently and having full ownership of the area.

Expressive Arts

Inspiring creations with playdough

February 3, 2022 Miss Campbell Leave a comment

Today in the Home room we have enjoyed spending time at the playdough station. We have learned lots of different skills while we manipulate the dough into wonderful creations. We used a variety of loose parts to inspire our creative thought and design processes.

First we made the playdough. The children asked for purple playdough. We decided to use our colour mixing skills to make purple by mixing red and blue paint together.

“First we need blue”

“Then red”

“Look what’s happened when we mixed them together. It’s purple”

After we had made our playdough, we began to let out our imaginations flow, creating our playdough masterpieces.

“I made a sun”

“

”Look it’s a unicorn”

“It’s a star wars alien space ship with lasers that are flying”

“It’s a face and the dark purple is the hair”

“I’m using the stones to make a happy face”.

We have been engaging fully with our learning today, building new skills are proud to show everyone what we created.

I wonder what we will make tomorrow with the playdough?

Expressive Arts

Pumpkin Playdough!

October 15, 2021 User deactivated Leave a comment

Today, the boys and girls have been discussing Halloween and the things associated with it.
We had a look at some pumpkins online and some we had at Cart Mill. We discussed the different shapes and colours.

After discussing the pumpkins, the children decided they wanted to make their own pumpkins, so we thought we would make some orange pumpkin playdough!

We even added in some cinnamon!

Once the playdough was made, it was time to create our own pumpkins…

Uncategorized

Sensory Play

October 4, 2021 User deactivated Leave a comment

Today the children found a packet of marshmallows and were keen to explore and investigate them.

Using an iPad they researched what things they could make. We found a recipe for marshmallow playdough so we chose that.

The children measured out the marshmallows and poured some vegetable oil into a bowl.

The recipe asked for the marshmallows to be melted and the children asked how they would do this. They talked about it and used the microwave in the staff room to do this.

After 30 secs the microwave pinged and they were excited to see what the marshmallows looked like. They noticed that they had all melted but looked hot.

They brought the bowl back to the playroom and added some cornflour to the mix. Using their super muscles they took turns at mixing it.