Animals have also been a popular theme this week, especially with our visit from Kimmy’s Zoo! On Thursday the children were all invited to join us for an animal fun day where they were able to meet and touch an exotic collection of animals, including; Shelby the tortoise, Fifi the skunk, Stanley the chinchilla, Rapunzel the giant millipede and Charley the bearded dragon. As well as meeting the animals, children were also able to decorate their own animal masks, make animal collages and bake bird nest cakes.
Water has been well received as the warm weather continues. We started with water in our water tray with the children then choosing to add a collection of washing up and hand wash bottles. We experimented with the pump action effect that the hand wash bottles offered; watching as the water was sucked up and then spat out! Children then decided to explore the effects of pouring water down ramps, as they then realised they would need to quickly find something to collect it with at the other end! Others simply enjoyed transporting the water from the water table to other areas of the garden, such as the mud kitchen and growing patch. Next, water was added to a tuff spot to achieve a mini splash
pool effect – children removed their shoes and socks and enjoyed the cooling effects of splashing in the water, with one child saying, “This is the best day at Squirrels EVER!”
With so much time spent in the garden, we decided to go exploring to see what nature finds we could collect. The children found an assortment of twigs, leaves, shells and stones, which we attached to a giant piece of paper. Children were encouraged to talk about their finds, which led to an interesting discussion about rubbish that was found… should they stick this on the picture? Why was there rubbish in the garden? Is rubbish good or not?
Finally, we have been closely observing our caterpillars on their journey towards being butterflies. We were very excited to be able to release our butterflies this week and watched as they fluttered their wings and flew away!
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home:
Why not have your own nature hunt at home? See what you can collect as you walk home from Squirrels and encourage children to discuss what they find; look at shapes, sizes, colours… you could even count your finds or try and group them based on size or type.