Tag Archives: team work

Baking, Creativity, Snack, Social Studies

The great Cart Mill bake off🧁

March 8, 2024 Miss Brown Leave a comment

Today the children wanted to make muffins for snack. They each washed their hands and put aprons on before starting as we spoke about the importance of hand hygiene especially before and after preparing food. We looked out all the ingredients and pre heated the oven.

Ingredients:

3 scoops of gluten free flour
1/2 scoop of sugar
1 teaspoon of Xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
100 ml Soya milk

“Can I add raisins?”

“me too”

The children measured all the ingredients out and carefully added them to their bowl, giving them a good mix using their gross motor skills.

“it’s so hard to mix now, it’s not soft”

Now they are ready for the oven. We discussed our rules about using the oven.

“It’s very hot, only adults allowed”

“You need oven gloves, so you don’t burn yourself”

When they were ready we let them cool down in the kitchen. Next we gathered chopping boards and knifes to cut up the muffins and we cut them up and shared them equally between 3 plates to have for our afternoon snack. They even had a wee sneaky taste test for all their hard work.

“hmmm yummy our friends are going to love these”

Article 29 – I have the right to an education which develops my personality, talents and abilities.

Expressive Arts, Technologies

Upcycling project

July 13, 2023 Miss Brown Leave a comment

This week the children have been working very hard to start their up cycling project at the tinker table.

They began by looking for something around the playroom that they could ‘Up cycle’. They found an old storage drawer that had missing handles on the boxes. They collected loose materials such as buttons, pipe cleaners, beads, bottle lids, small wood chips and twigs to use as new handles for the boxes.

They used skills they had previously learned at the tinker table to join the new handles to the box.

“I can use the hammer and nails to put this wood on”

Once all the new handles were on the children noticed one of the drawers were missing. Using their problem solving skills one of the older children suggested making a sign to let everyone know that the new up cycled storage drawers belong to the tinker table.

The next job on the list is to up cycle our broken wormery, we are looking for longer pieces of wood if anyone has any lying about that they no longer need.

Literacy

Exploring our Senses

January 12, 2023 Mr Edwards 1 Comment

This week in the discovery room we have taken on the role of scientists and started exploring our senses. Following on from our experiments on how sound travels and using our sense of hearing. Today we explored our sense of smell!

First we had discussions about the 5 senses, focusing on our sense of smell. The children talked about what we use to smell and even what we could smell around us. Bellow are some comments.

“We use my nose to smell”

“My nose is very good at smelling”

“I smell soap on my hands”

“I’m smell my perfume, it’s my mummy’s favourite”

Next we set up our learning activity. Providing 8 tubs containing orange, banana, cucumber, coffee, garlic, mint, cinnamon and ginger. These were accompanied by matching picture cards with the written text.

Next I invited the children to start exploring the tubs using their sense of smell and asking if they could identify any of them. Some of the smells were familiar and some were new scents. We made our productions on what we thought may be in the tubs and match them to the picture cards. Once they were all matched we looked inside to see if we were correct. Below are some of the comment during the activity.

“I smelled orange and banana”

“I have never smelled ginger before”

“I smelled cucumber”

“The garlic is very smelly”

“I smelled coffee, mummy smells of coffee sometimes”

As some of the scents were new to us we had matched some of them to the wrong cards. Now we had seen them all and we were more familiar with the items in the tubs we tried the activity again. Everyone worked together as a team to smell and share what they thought it may be. Having discussing and debates about what they thought could be in each tub. Working together this time they matched all the correct tubs to the picture cards.

Well done little scientists!

I wonder what we will explore next?

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Let us entertain you!

June 17, 2022 Ms Taylor Leave a comment

We have had a busy day in our Studio. We have explored our creativity and imagination through art and storytelling.
Using a selection of junk and art materials we were able to build our own puppet theatre.

We shared and discussed what our favourite fairy tale stories were and who our favourite characters from popular stories were. We then listened to some stories before creating our own puppets. Using our great craft and motor skills when glueing, sticking, cutting and drawing we made our very own puppets all ready for the premier of our puppet show performances.

“ I’m making a fairy for my story”

” Sleeping beauty is my favourite so I’m making Aurora “

Once our audience settled, we began our performances! We sat very patiently and demonstrated good listening skills while we all had a turn of being the puppeteer. For some stories we needed some help from a friend to puppeteer alongside us as it got a bit tricky trying to hold all the characters at once!
We used our loud speaking voices to introduce our characters and the name of our stories we would be re-enacting. Some of us were a little shy and nervous to begin but when it came to our turn our confidence shone and we were able to re-tell familiar and popular stories using our own words such as ‘The Three Bears’, ‘Goldilocks’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Some of us were able to make our own stories up using our puppets we created.

Well done boys and girls you have been great entertainers! We all enjoyed listening and watching your stories and had so much fun with our puppet theatre, why not give this a go at home? You could make up your own puppets and stories!

Expressive Arts, Literacy

Mark making with the Cars

June 14, 2022 Miss Brown Leave a comment

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”

Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Happy Campers ⛺️

April 25, 2022 Miss Simms Leave a comment

Today, the children were talking about camping in tents and shared their some of their own experiences together in a small group.

”I have been camping”

”I have a tent in my living room”

“ I would like to go camping “

We decided to bring the outdoors in to the discovery room and build our own tent in our block area. We shared our thoughts on how we could create this and what resources we would need to collect.

Some suggestions of what we could make or need for our camping experience were – ”a roof ”, “a camp fire”, “torches”, sleeping bag” and of course “ food”

The children gathered a variety of resources and began to build the tent using and exercising their gross motor skills. They communicated well and helped one another when building their tent. During this time they were able to problem solve together when they had to think and decide “how will the roof stay on ?” The children had some great ideas – “we could use cellotape” “string” “blocks” and “pegs” . We decided the pegs and blocks worked the best .

Finally the tent was complete and the children were excited to get inside and begin to make a campfire using some sticks, stones and tissue paper. The children used their imaginations creating a variety of scenarios they have tried before such as toasting marshmallows, fishing, playing mummy’s and daddy’s and Going on a Bear Hunt.

” It’s sleepover time”

”I have made real life marshmallows on a fire ”🔥

”Fire is burny”

Later, I was invited into the tent join the children and read one of our favourite stories – The Tiger Who Came to Tea before we snuggled down cosy for our sleep in our tent! ⛺️ Goodnight campers! See you in the morning!⛺️

Special Event

Easter Fun at Cart Mill!

April 14, 2022 Mrs Hannah Leave a comment

It’s been such a busy week at Cart Mill. We are so looking forward to our holiday weekend! What better way to end the week than having a fun day!

First of all we decided to have an Easter Egg hunt to make sure everyone has had an egg to take home. The eggs were tricky to find, but with a bit of teamwork and encouraging each other, we managed to find them all!

Next it was time to practice our directions and positional language on our bikes! We were able to go forwards and backwards, stop and start, fast and slow, and race each other round our track. We drew our own arrows and reminded each other to follow them so that we didn’t have any crashes!

We created our own obstacle course and carried out our own risk assessments to decide how many crates we would feel safe to jump from.

Then it was time to see who could roll the cable reels the furthest!
We were exhausted after using up all of our energy outside so it was time for some Peter Rabbit and some popcorn and fruit for snack.

Have a lovely holiday weekend everyone. We look forward to welcoming you back when we reopen on Tuesday.

Literacy

The wheels on the bus

April 11, 2022 Miss Simms Leave a comment

Today in the Discovery room we were learning about transport. We looked at different pictures of ways we can travel to and from places.

We shared stories of places we have travelled by bus, cars trains and some of us have been on holiday on aeroplanes.

”I have been on bus with my brother and daddy”

“My favourite is a plane ”

We thought about how we could create our own transport by using our variety of blocks. Together we decided to make our own bus so that we could go a trip to the zoo and beach. We displayed great teamwork and together we chose which blocks would be best to make our bus.

First we built up the side of the bus using the longer pieces. We found that the square block would make good seats on the bus for the passengers. We made a special compartment for the bus drivers. We made doors for everyone to come on and off the bus. We added a fuel tank to ensure we had enough to get home.

Our bus door

That was us ready to take our seats to go on our adventure to the zoo. It gave us a great opportunity to sing one of our favourite songs The Wheels On The Bus.