Learning with Lions, Insects & Bears!

Over the last couple of weeks, the pre-school children have had lots of fun discovering different types and species of animals. Inside the pre-school room there was a bugs and insect activity with many natural materials such as bark, logs, small tree branches and acorns. The children enjoyed looking closely through the magnifying glasses at the different marks on each of the bugs and insects. Olivia closely looked at the marks on the butterflies wings and told her friends, “It’s so pretty”. Isaac took a closer look too and agreed, “Yes it is so pretty”. Tom went on to look at the bugs that were inside their own magnifying glass and was fascinated by them for quite some time, turning them very slowly so that he could take in all of the features. When he picked up the one that had a spider in it, he jokingly screamed, “Ahh” which made his friends jump and laugh.

Outside in the garden there was a slightly different and larger type of animal set up, as there was a jungle safari in which the children really loved making lots of noise and roaring along with the lions and tigers. Whilst there was some pretend leaves in the set up, Reegan and Louis collected their own leaves that had fallen on the floor to add to the animals home. James used the giraffe to reach up to the trees and pretended that they were eating the leaves off the trees whilst saying, “Yummy, yummy”. Ari was challenging his friends with their knowledge of the jungle animals. He was asking them, “Now does anyone know what a tigers baby is called?” His friends looked at him waiting for the answer and Ari encouraged, “Just have a guess, it’s the same as a bears baby”. Louis excitedly called out, “A cub”, very proud of himself when Ari told him he was right. Ari then went on to explain, “A tiger, a bear and a lions babies are all called cubs”.

The children really love the story book ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ and have taken a particular interest lately in trying to find the bear outside in the garden. A large group of pre-school and toddler children were very engaged in the story and were using various parts of the garden as parts of the story. The grass area was the river, the trees were the forest and the tree house was the bear cave. Joshua made sure to keep his younger brother reassured, “It’s only a pretend bear, it’s not scary”. The children then went on to create their own version of the story book.