Tag Archives: teamwork

Story Box!

The children have been very creative in the junk modelling area over the past couple of weeks designing and making their own story characters.

They made a story box using recycled materials such as cardboard, bottle tops, bottles and cartons and decorated it adding some coloured tissue paper and more crafts.

Using their imaginations the children came up with some great ideas for characters, they created bunny rabbits, a hare, batman, a robot, a boat, a car, a monster, an octopus and so much more and added it all to the story box.

Next they selected some characters from the box and began to tell their story, writing it down as they went along.

“The mermaid kitty and the octopus went in the taxi to the shop.  They bought cheese and ice cream. Then they met hare and batman and then they went home. The End.”

Something as simple as a cereal box can spark so much conversation and lead on to so many amazing ideas where the children develop their problem solving skills , communication skills, and are able to express their thoughts and ideas.

We are so grateful to you all for bringing in your recycling it has so many benefits for your children.

Burns day at Cart Mill

Happy Burns Day!

Today at Cart Mill we have been celebrating all things Scottish…

We have been making Scotland flags in the playdough area with Emma using blue and white playdough…

We have had so much fun helping Fiona to make Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, we helped to peel the potatoes 🥔 and then we got to taste it at snack time!

We also had a try at some Scottish dancing today in the discovery room… We listened to Scottish ceilidh music and practiced some traditional dance moves with the help of Gails expertise!

In the studio, we have used different coloured ribbons to create our own tartan pictures. The children were able to select their own colours and create their own patterns inspired by pictures of various tartan…

As you can see the children have had so much fun exploring a variety of experiences throughout the day at nursery! We have had a fabulous burns day  🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

 

Welcome to our story corner 🧸 📚

We have been very busy in the home room today, setting up a cosy book corner. The children started off by choosing their favourite stories from our library cupboard, selecting a variety of books that sparked their imagination.

“The scary shark looks like this.”

”I have this one at home, it’s my favourite.”

We then got started on choosing puppets for our story corner.

”Let’s have incy wincy”

”I like this one, it has little red riding hood and the wolf”

We sang some of the children’s favourite nursery rhymes and then choose our rhyme of the week, which was wind the bobbin up 🧵.

”Wind the bobbin up is my favourite”

”I like when we sing it really fast”

We then had lots of fun reading stories, singing and playing with the puppets in our new area. Well done to the children for helping set it up, great job!

Let’s get building!

Today in the discovery room the children have been having lots of fun working together as a team to build brilliant models.

This morning the children were using their problem solving skills to build their fantastic fire engine, great job!


“This is our fire engine.”

”I’m the driver.”

“I’m on the phone”

This afternoon the children were super busy, using their creative skills to build their spaceship for everyone to join.


“This bit needs to go here”

”I’ll fix it”

Everyone aboard! The children were all very engaged in playing in the ‘spaceship’ and acting out scenarios. We even spotted aliens in space!

“Everyone get in, blast off.”

”we’re in space, I can see aliens.”

 

 

 

Patchwork houses

Thank you so much for all the kind donations of boxes and cardboard  for our junk modelling area. We decided to have a look in our Cardboard Creations book for some inspiration!   We loved the patchwork houses in our book and decided we would make some of our own!

We discussed what resources we would need and decided on:

“glue to stick things on”

“cardboard or boxes to make the house”

”scissors to cut things”.

”pens to draw windows and a door to get in”

”material, coloured paper and buttons to stick on”

We worked together to collect our resources and shared our thoughts on why we had chosen them.

”I’m choosing pink, it’s my favourite colour”.

”My favourite is red”.

”my favourite is red too”.

It was a bit tricky to cut the cardboard so we decided it would be safer if an adult used bigger scissors to cut it for us.  Using our smaller scissors helped us develop our fine motor skills, through cutting our paper, ribbon and wool.

Next it was time to design our house! We demonstrated excellent mark making and writing skills by adding our own features to our houses.

“I’m drawing windows. We need them up at the top, and at the bottom”.

”I’m drawing a door so we can get in and out”.

”I need a chimney, it goes on the top on the roof”.

”I’m writing number 23, that’s the same as my house”.

It was lots of fun choosing different materials to glue onto our houses. We used our knowledge to describe our materials and explain why we had chosen them.

“I like this one, it looks like a picnic blanket!”

”I like the pink one. It’s shiny and smooth”.

”The green one is like a tree, it’s fluffy”.

”The ribbon looks like a tractor wheel”.

”This one is black and white and it has flowers on it”.

”I love the blue one, it’s bumpy and has sparkles on it”.

”I’m putting buttons on. I like the colours”.

The glue on our houses was still a bit wet, so we decided to put them up to dry. When we put all our houses together, we decided it looked like “a wee village!”

It was so much fun making our houses and we can’t wait to see what else we can create!

 

 

 

 

This week in the noisy/quiet room

Following on from recent interests, this week in the noisy quiet room the children have enjoyed exploring the farm animals in the small world area.

The children have been using their imagination and role play skills to create their own stories and play using the small world equipment.

”its Old MacDonald’s farm, there is sheep and pigs and cows”

”There is little cows and big cows, small goats too”

”My favourite animal is the pig”

The children have also recently enjoyed building with our wooden train track and talking about all the different places you could go on a train…

   

”You could go to the shops or to a restaurant”

”I go on holidays”

”Trains go so fast”

Small world play is a great way for children to explore their imagination and develop their role play skills. It could represent a real life place like a farm or it could be a completely imaginary world.

 

Why don’t you try some small world play at home?

What animals can you hear?

Today in the noisy quiet room the children took part in a listening activity. Following our current interest of ‘the farm’ we tested our knowledge of what animal sounds we could identify. These included farm animals and other animals in the wider world.   


Using an animal sounds CD and matching picture cards we got to work. First we looked at the animal card and identified the animal. Then together we made the sound we thought it would make. Next we listed to the animal sound on the CD to see if we were correct.  We all used our voices to make some really good animal sounds.

Once we were more familiar with the animal sounds we decided to challenge ourselves a little more.   This time we played the sound first and then selected what animal it was from the cards displayed. We worked together as a team to identify all the animals displayed.

“I think it’s a guinea pig”

“Cow”

“It’s a big rooster”

“That’s a turkey, it’s like a chicken”

Everyone did a fantastic job using their listening and talking skills to develop their knowledge of animal sounds. Well done everyone!

Indoor bug hotel

This morning the children were exploring the mini beasts in the Discovery room.

They used magnifying glasses to inspect the bugs closer and commented on the different colours, shapes and sizes they could see and then they compared them to the pictures of the bugs.

” This bug is that one because its green and has 4 wings”

The children came up with the idea to build a bug hotel with small and large blocks from our block/construction area.  They worked together as a team to pass each block down the production line until the bug hotel was finished.

They tried to fit inside the bug hotel with the bugs but it was too small, so they decided to build a big house for them to fit in.

” this is a big house it fit us in”

 

Super scientists👨‍🔬

Today in our garden we have been super scientists! We decided to make our own chalk paint, so we gathered all the ingredients needed and got started. We used our problem solving and teamwork skills to follow the steps to create the paint. Firstly we added in the cornflour, water and then food colouring of choice.

The children then painted lonely designs on the floor.


“I’m painting my  mummy”

”Look at mines, it’s a funny face”

The children then decided they wanted to mix in different ingredients to see what happens, so we mixed in bicarbonate soda and vinegar and waited to see what happened.

“Wow it’s exploding”

“Mine looks like a volcano”

“It’s bubbling”

3,2,1… GO!

Today the children have been exploring distance and time using different resources from around the play room.

They collected cars of different shapes and sizes and created a race track to see which car would go the fastest.

They chose the long cardboard tubes to use as the track but realised that not all cars could fit, so they chose some different ramps and tubes to test them out.

“We need to get a bigger tube, the yellow car doesn’t fit”

We watched for the cars coming down the ramp, we tried to see if they would go back up but they kept rolling down again.


”3,2,1 GO!” The  children shouted as they raced the cars, which one made it to the finish line first?


”The purple was the fastest”

“That black one didn’t win because it was slow”