Tag Archives: #problemsolving

Expressive Arts

Exploring the tinker table

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Today the children were exploring the different tools and wood at the tinker table and planned out what they were going to make and what tools they would need to make it.

“ I want to make a boat”

We discussed the safety rules we need to follow when using the tools and what we need to wear to keep our hands and eyes safe.

”We need to wear safety gloves”  “and goggles”


The children collected the things that they needed and got to work.

”I need some wood and a hammer and nails” “and some glue”

The nails are all different sizes so they had to measure against the wood to make sure the nail didn’t stick out the other end.

“I need different shapes of wood for my boat like the round bit for the sail, I need to glue it though because it’s too long”

“I want to use the hammer” “ This ones a bit tricky though”

They explored the different woods, some were softer than others.

The children are developing their hand eye co-ordination as they hammer the nails in to the wood.

“I want to saw this bit of wood”

When using the saw we mark on the wood with a pen which bit we would like to cut on so that it’s clearer to see the cut. Sawing takes large muscle movements when moving it back and forwards and develops Gross motor skills. “That was hard work”.

 

Expressive Arts, Technologies

Cart Mill Engineers

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Today the children have been very busy in the Construction area.

They used their team working skills to discuss and create a plan to build a new bridge and roads.

They spoke about the different shapes and sizes of the blocks and how they would join together so that the road didn’t have ‘bumps’ on it .

“You need big muscles to be able to carry the big blocks”

“This block is wider than that one”

“We can make a ramp so the cars can go up and down,  the car can’t jump up”

They added in ‘funny shaped blocks’ to create  roundabouts for the cars to go round.

Once all the pieces were joined together for the road, they looked for bigger blocks for the bridge.

“This big one can be the start of the bridge and then we’ll add 4 bigger ones it will be so tall”

The children used their problem solving skills as they worked together to make the roads and bridge safe for the cars to drive on. They carried out a test run and a final check, then the bridge was complete.

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Mark making with the Cars

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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”

 

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

Fun time, Junk time 😊

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Today in the Studio the children were inspired to be creative by some giant boxes kindly donated by one of our parents.

They decided to build a house complete with a back and front garden and even a chimney. The children worked well together planning how their house should look.


There was a lot of chat about what everyone had in their house and what they could use in the centre to replicate the items. Some of their ideas included;
“ look I have made the key to get into the house, I used a cotton bud and tissue paper” “I think I will make a table to have my dinner at” “ I think there should be two doors at the front “ “ The garden should have rainbow grass” “I’m going to make the grass with different colours of tissue paper” “ I want to make  a dinosaur room for my stegosaurus”  I think it’s snowing at our house” I have made a barricade to keep everyone in the back garden”
What wonderful, imaginative suggestions!

The children used team work and exercised their gross motor skills to move the big boxes to where they wanted them and working together, they were able to use their problem solving skills to keep the roof up.” Let’s put these supports into stop it falling down”  

The children loved using their imagination to make their house and spent many hours playing in it.  Great team work everybody, well done!

Digital Technology, Technologies

Our Maze Adventure

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Today in the Discovery room we have been busy learning about ‘what is a maze?’

We had a think about it and decided we should write down what we thought it was. 🤔 Here are some of our mind mapping ideas-

“It is round and you find your way out.”

”A maze is something you go in to.”

“You have to get in one way and another way out.”

The first thing we decided to do was look at different types of mazes and have a go trying to solve them out using our fingers to work our way around them and then we tried to follow it using our pens .

“These can be tricky!”

“Watch out for those dead ends!”


“My bee  is going to get the  flower”

We had so much fun exploring our mazes that we decided to create one for our Bee Bots, using our wooden blocks in a pattern.

First we created a route by using the wooden blocks to mark out the path. We used all our problem solving skills to identify and remove the blocks that wouldn’t work with our route until our maze was complete – not forgetting to add in some dead ends to make it a bit more tricky!

We placed the Bee Bots on the green circle that symbolised green is for go and start. The children pressed up, down, left, right buttons while counting the number of times the Bee Bot moved to direct him all the way through the maze.

The children had lots of fun and were developing their navigation, co-ordination, problem solving skills, social skills by taking turns and working as part of a team, following and giving instructions and developing their language skills by suggesting ideas and supporting each other. They also showed their ICT programming skills by programming the bee-bots to follow the route round their maze.

Why not give it a go at home, you can draw or make one and if you are lucky enough to have a remote control toy, you could see if it can get through the maze. We hope you have an a-mazing time!😊

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What is a scientist?

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Today we have been learning about and  discussing scientists.

In our science area  during a group discussion we used a mind map to  record what we already know  and knowledge we could share with each other.

Here are some or our thoughts……

“ A scientist looks at things with a magnifying glass “

”They make explosions ”

”They investigate things”

We looked at things  as scientist might wear and why. Some of us tried dressing up as one.

“They wear coats so they don’t get messy from mixtures and gloves and goggles to keep their hands and eyes safe”.

We  looked at some of the equipment that a scientist might use with their experiments. We looked at magnifying glasses and microscopes and we learned that they help to make things bigger and  easier to look at. At first we found it a little bit tricky as we has to focus the lens but we soon got the hang of it and had fun exploring and looking more  closely in our Discovery area.

 

We took time to look at and read through a popular book we have in nursery. It is called ‘Ada Twist Scientist’. This book tells the story of a girl who has lots of questions and always wonders how things work and why. We watched her story on our Promethium board to help tell us more about how  Ada  the scientist  investigates things.

Do you have questions about how things work? Or what new things can you discover together at home?

 

 

Outdoor Learning

Imaginative play in the garden

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Today in the garden the children had great fun using our giant polydron pieces.

They checked out some pictures for inspiration before drawing up their own plans.

The children worked really well as a team to create various designs, developing their problem solving skills and communicating their ideas.

“we made a train, all aboard “

“look at our house”

The possibilities are endless and through polydron activities it will help them to grow and develop to their full potential.

Expressive Arts

Junk modelling robot

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We have been enjoying exploring the junk modelling area since moving in to the Studio room last week. The children discussed what they would like to make and made a plan to make a robot but what would they need, they decided to list all the things they would need.

”We need glue”
”and Cellotape”
“and of course, junk!”

The children used their imagination and problem solving skills to figure out how to make the parts stay together.

“You need to leave the glue to dry so it sticks”


The children worked together as a team making sure they followed their design so that everything was in the right places.

“paint it yellow like a bumble bee”

To finish off they decided to paint it yellow and add some cardboard tubes for arms.

The yellow paint didn’t cover the box as well as we thought, so the children improvised and used yellow tissue paper instead.

We are always looking for cardboard boxes (big and small), bottle lids, cartons, cereal boxes etc. to add to our collection so save your recycling and instead of putting it all in your blue bins, bring it in to us!

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Magic Magnets

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Today in the discovery room we looked at magnets and how they work.

We decided to select different items we found around our playroom and investigated to see if they were magnetic using a selection of different sized magnets.

We used our mathematical skills to discover that magnets can pull together objects or push them away. We also found that although we had two of the same item, only one was magnetic. This is because objects that look the same are not always made of the same material.

We recorded our findings on a chart. It showed us what items were magnetic and those that were non-magnetic. We discovered that magnetic things were made of metal but items that were made of wood or plastic were not magnetic, unless they had a little bit of metal in them!

We loved listening to each other making our predictions whether something was magnetic or not, everybody made sure they were taking turns when choosing what items to test. We loved guessing the material!

Why don’t you have a look around the house and guess what materials are magnetic or not!