Category Archives: Creative Arts
⭐️ Shining Stars ⭐️
In Arran the children have been getting into the Christmas spirit – role-playing and hammering in the elves’ workshop, potting their hyacinths in silver pots, creating seasonal artwork, using clay to design decorations of their choice, counting penguins, making cards, calendars, lanterns and much more…
What a busy bunch!
Outdoors we have been exploring the properties of ice and enjoying frosty walks to Busby church gardens.
Role Play: “It’s a polar landscape.”
Literacy: In the Story Box, The Gruffalo’s Child has been very popular, with the children keen to act out the story and make up their own versions using the props for character and setting.
Stick Man has been another seasonal favourite story to explore.
We also read Little Owl and the Christmas Star and looked at different types of stars, before the children designed their own.
Rolling, moulding, cutting, imprinting: the Red, Yellow & Pink groups experimented with clay and water to create stars, snowmen and other decorations, using beads and various implements to make patterns, then metallic paints with varnish to finish them off.
“I’m going to make mine so pretty!”
The children were very proud of their different shining stars. We hope you enjoy hanging them on your tree or around the house!
Science: Planting & Growing: We have been watching the hyacinth bulbs that we planted start to grow. The children repotted them in silver pots for you and hope you enjoy the flowers later at home.
Science: Watch us mixing up fake snow using baking soda and hair conditioner…
Science: Ice Experiments: nature has kindly provided us with lots of thick ice shapes to investigate and experiment with.
Outdoors the children had great fun rolling down hills and investigating bugs found under logs
“I want to hold the wood louse… we have to be gentle. I’m going to put him back.” “Look, black beetles!” “A centipede!”
We have been gradually adding to our Kindness/ Christmas Tree with snowflake decorations, sunshine sticks and kind deeds.
“Share my lego with friends.” “I helped with lunch.”
Making lanterns to light up Busby
Numeracy: Christmas counting games
The children have also been offering ideas for a new nursery logo and then voting for their favourites to create a simple pictogram.
We’ve seen some fabulous Christmas outfits!
We wish a Merry Christmas to all our star children and their families!
We hope you have a very happy time together during the break.
Celebrating St Andrew’s Day!
St Andrew’s Day!
The pink and yellow group have been having lots of fun celebrating ‘St Andrew’s Day’.
We decided to make our playdough ‘blue’ and ‘white’ as we learned that ‘blue’ and ‘white’ are the colours of our Scotland flag.
We mixed, measured and kneaded the dough to make our Scottish play-dough!
We had lots of fun using our fine motor skills such as cutting, sticking and gluing to make our own Scottish kilts! The ‘pink‘ and ‘yellow’ group learned about tartan and that each kilt has different colours and patterns on it. We created our own patterns on our kilts!
Have a look…
The ‘pink’ and ‘yellow’ group also read the storybook ‘The Gruffalo in Scots’ by Julia Donaldson and learned the Scottish way to say certain words like;
‘Moose’ – ‘Mouse’
‘Broon’ – ‘Brown’
‘Hae’ – ‘Have’
‘Whit’ – ‘What’
‘Lang’ – ‘Long’
‘Sherp’ – ‘Sharp’
We then ate porridge and potato scones for our snack!
“I have porridge for my breakfast!”
“I love porridge!”
“I live in Scotland”
We finished our exciting day by listening to the nursery rhyme ‘3 Craws Sat Upon a Wall’ and trying some Scottish dancing! We had lots of fun learning and celebrating St Andrew’s Day!
Health and Well-being with green and blue
For health and well-being week we have been discussing and learning all about our differences and similarities.
We have been reading “Elmer the Elephant“ which conveys the important message of being proud of who you are despite your differences. The children used the character puppets to act out the story as Mrs Branco read to them.
With a choice of a variety of different materials the children were able to create their own transient art elephants.
Some of the children also decorated an elephant picture to take home. Lots of glueing, sticking and colouring to help develop our fine motor skills.
Following on from Elmer the children listened to the story “All Kinds of People” , helping us to visualise the differences there are in people. They then used mirrors to assist in their self portraits, this opened up a dialogue between the children about hair colour, eye colour, height and skin tone etc.
We were able to express to our friends the things we liked about their pictures and the differences between us. Each picture was beautiful and unique just the same as us!
Feeling Groovy 🌞🙏🏼
It is Health and Wellbeing Week! In Pink and Yellow groups we are thinking about our differences & similarities, our feelings, and how to keep ourselves feeling good, relaxed and strong.
Monday is Dare to be Different Day. So we have had cool purple hair, some odd socks and some unusual yet fabulous style choices!
We’ve been talking about the ways we are different and the same.
“I don’t like spiders.” “I like sprouts!” “I have blond hair.” “We all have brains…” “And skeletons.”
Our “Different Together” paper chain:
At Signing- In time each child chose a different patterned strip to write their name on. We all have different favourite colours and patterns, and we joined them together to make a big paper chain.
We have been talking about different types of people and creating our own tiny people with lollipop sticks, pipe cleaners, buttons, felt, lace, wool and other materials.
“I want her to have red hair at the back and the front. She has a lovely smile.” “I’m going to add this for a hat.”
“Let’s play with them…”
Noo-Noo (left) was feeling lonely because of being a bit different, but look how many friends the children have made for Noo-Noo now!
Tuesday is Bounce Back day, all about resilience. At Together Time, the children all thought of things that make them feel happy and put them in a Thank You Jar with a coloured feather.
Here are some of the things we are grateful for:
“Star Wars and ice cream,” “Pink, and birdies in my garden”, “Daddy, Mummy” , “My sisters” ,”Squirrels in my gardens, and cats… and jewels”, “Tigers and Pokémon.” “The colour red” ,”Jingle bells” “Tickly feathers” , “My puppy and my two guinea pigs”, “Music in your heart.”
Afterwards we made some Sunshine sticks:
Keep smiling!
Some Spooky Goings on…
In Katrine Room (Yellows and Pinks), the children’s talk and excitement about Hallowe’en has inspired lots of learning – they’ve been building (with bones), designing, learning about spiders and bats, enjoying songs, dancing, story-telling and science experiments.
We’ve been talking about our bones and where they are in our bodies, as well as reading Funny Bones and practising the Skeleton Dance. If you want to try the dance at home, here is the link: https://youtu.be/Pbl4BNkAq_U
Experiments and imaginative role play have been going on at the water table and all around the room: “We’re filling the spider bowl up to make a bath for the snake…” “We’re making a triple berry pie…” “It’s a disgusting pie!”
Spider & Bat Studies
The children have shown a keen interest in bats and spiders from wildlife magazines. So we’ve been studying them with books and videos and later made some models of them. Good fine motor and threading skills were on display as the children poked pipe cleaners and string through holes to construct spiders.
“That’s a tarantula.” “I’m going to the make the one with orange legs.”
We also tried different ways to make giant webs…
Fine motor skills were further tested whilst picking spiders out of webs using tweezers and other tools.
With great concentration, children selected shapes to make bats, tried their hand at pumpkin printing, and created individual lantern designs – the best bit was when we put out the lights and lit them up!
In Science experiments they studied the life cycle of a pumpkin, dissected them, and then planted pumpkin seeds. We look forward to watching them grow…
Creative Minds at Work
The Red Group put on a Show 🎭
After reading The Gruffalo’s Child together, the Red group children were excited to create their own puppets and put on shows using characters from the story, and characters of their own. They experimented with torches to create lighting effects in their cardboard box theatre.
The Reds have also been very creative at building houses with peas and cocktail sticks.
At the Junk Modelling table the Yellow and Pink group children came up with all sorts of innovative ideas, creating “a flag”, “a drum”, “a butterfly”, “a robot”, “a Dino Detector”, “R2D2”, “a bubble palace for tiny wee invisible people” and “a hamster run“. It’s amazing how many ideas emerge from a bit of rubbish, some tape and string…
A flag created at the junk table was tested out and flown in the wind outside.
Creative ideas with Rice:
“We made a cake with candles. Shh, it’s a surprise!”
Creative Cookery: making banana smoothies. They were “yum!”
Super maths with green and blue
Over the past few weeks the children in the Green and Blue group have enjoyed learning all about shape and numbers. Have a look at all the fun experiences we took part in while developing our early numeracy skills.
The children sorted and identified shapes whilst taking part in “tap tap” and transient art activities, they then used these shapes to make objects.
They have also used a variety of media to make shapes, including paint printing and mark making in shaving foam.
Blue and Green group took part in number activities and displayed confidence when counting out and matching corresponding numbers with picture cards.
September Days with the Yellows and Pinks 🍁🍄🍏
As Summer turns to Autumn the children have been learning about what is growing and changing with the seasons. The Yellow and Pink groups have been exploring Autumn through song and role play, making leaf prints, counting conkers and acorns, and chopping apples and plums from the trees to find their seeds. We have been talking about harvesting and where different foods come from:
”Carrots and potatoes grow in the ground.” “Apples and pears on trees.”
“That’s wheat… it gets made into Weetabix!”
Autumn role play corner in the Katrine Room.
The children painted an autumn frieze after looking at art by David Hockney, Gustav Klimt and Andy Goldsworthy. They wanted to make bats and fairies to add to the forest and glued on real leaves.
They later designed Autumn fairies using wooden pegs and leaves.
Chopping apples and plums, using hammer & nails to create squash hedgehogs, and designing leaf people.
Using leaves to copy a repeating pattern and create designs.
This week the children wanted to make a Safari Park for wild animals. They were fascinated to read the brochure from Blair Drummond Safari Park and tried drawing their own maps of it.
They also modelled a cave for the bears using Mod Roc with balloons, powder paint and water.
In Numeracy we have been learning about pattern. At Together Time the children identified, described and matched different animal patterns. They practised their aim and number identification with this Beanbag number game. Watch them in action!
If you would like to sing our Autumn Song with your child, here are the words (the tune is The Farmer’s in his Den). Have fun!
Autumn time is here, autumn time is here,
It’s getting very chilly now, ‘cos autumn time is here.
The leaves are falling down, the leaves are falling down,
Yellow, red and gold and brown, the leaves are falling down.
The animals gather food, the animals gather food,
Nuts and seeds and juicy fruits, the animals gather food.
The farmers gather crops, the farmers gather crops,
Peas and beans and broccoli, and we can eat them up.
Purple Group Adventures
The Purple Group have settled back into Nursery life really well. We have been establishing old and new friendships, following routines and learning lots of exciting things.
We have been spending a lot of time outdoors, accessing all aspects of the curriculum.
We love getting our wet suits on and exploring in the rain.
We have been exploring symmetry through a variety of different experiences. The children created butterflies and used transient art to develop their awareness of symmetry in their local environment.
Making tea in the water tray stimulated our senses. We have enjoyed taking part in a lot of different sensory activities across the playroom and outdoors.
