Throughout December, the children have enjoyed using our wonderful Forest School areas despite the colder weather.
The Children have been exploring the affects seasons have on mother nature and how we can look after the nature around us. We ran educational lessons supporting our Going Green ethos speaking about ways we can lower our carbon footprint as Blackberries Childcare Group.
EYFS Links:
UTW; Can talk about some of the things they have observed (30-50).
Fun Fact: Anything you can teach in an indoor classroom can be taught outdoors, often in ways that are more enjoyable for children.
The younger children have been exploring the leaves and how most of the leaves have fallen off the trees now. The children created their own leaf artwork and made leaf puppets which they enjoyed using in their role play activities. As a class the children discussed how the wind blows the leaves off the trees and onto the floor, we practised our wind noises, and then they had a go at moving like the trees do in the wind. We have extended this by taking the Toddlers on a nature walk to look at the different colours of the leaves on the tree’s and on the ground, collecting natural resources that we took back to nursery to make our natural decorations as well as our own collages.
EYFS Links:
PSED: Demonstrates sense of self and an individual (22-36).
CL: Uses single words (8-20).
CL: Uses different types of everyday words (16-26).
Fun Fact: 70% of the world’s animals depends on forests for their homes.
The older children have been exploring a range of weathers this month, we have been learning about how this impacts on all our nature gardens here at Blackberries. As a group the children spoke about how the snow made it too cold for the birds, so we made nests for them to keep warm while it was very cold. As a science role play activity, the children had to rescue some frozen animals (ornaments). We tried lots of different resources before we found that warm water helped melt the ice.
Exploring the weather has been a keen element of our Forest school sessions, with all the rain we have had lots of puddles to explore splashes in. As a group we held a competition to see who can make the biggest splash and looking at the different footprints left behind in the mud, comparing the sizes of our shoes. While looking for footprints we found bird footprints and tried to work out which birds they belong too…our guess was the pigeons.
With the recent frosty mornings, we have been fascinated by the spider webs. The children have been very keen to go on spider web hunts to find them and look at the different shapes created within the webs.
All the cold weather has been the perfect reason to have another fire session and try out our Kelly Kettle for the first time to make hot chocolate. We sat around the fire and talk about keeping safe and discussed who would help us if there was a fire to big. The fireman was our conclusion, which led to our fire drill practice. The kettle was exciting as we got to see the water boil and listen for it to whistle. We all had a go to see if we could whistle like the kettle too.
EYFS Links:
Physical Development – Understands that equipment and tools have to be used safely – 30 – 50 months
Mathematics – Begins to use the language of size – 22 – 36 months
Understanding the world – Can talk about some of the things they have observed such as plants, animals, natural and found objects. (30-50Months)
PSED: Seeks out others to share experiences (22-36).
Fun Fact: The frost we see on spider webs is called Hoar Frost
