Chicks, Ducks & Scavenger Hunts!

This week, the toddlers have enjoyed learning about chicks ready for our new fury friends to hatch out of their eggs. On Tuesday, when the eggs arrived, the toddlers all went to see them in their incubator. Lowri got very excited seeing the eggs and asked to “See eggs again” multiple times throughout the day, which she did! Olivia shook with excitement as she pointed towards the eggs saying “Egg, egg, egg! ”. To help the toddlers understand what was inside the egg, they were given a picture of a chick covered in whiteboard marker in a shape of an egg for them to rub off. Florence loved this as she was the first to see the chick appearing, she looked up and shouted “It’s a baby chick!”. Tommy and Lana were both very patient as they rubbed the wet wipe as hard as they could to slowly reveal the chicks underneath. Ada K enjoyed going round to her friends saying “I’m a chick, tweet tweet!”. 

Outside, the toddlers have loved having a picnic where they were able to choose which snack they wanted. Alastair said “I would like apple and a pear” while Blake asked for “Banana please”. The toddlers then went on a chick hunt, searching all round the garden. Rowan found one hiding underneath the tree house and said “Look! I found it under here!”. Sadie found one hiding in the tree and reached as high as she could to try pull it down. 

Back inside, the toddlers used clay to try and build their chicks a nest. Finley enjoyed poking his finger right through the clay saying “Holes holes”. James took his time using the rolling pin trying to get the clay as flat as it could go. Tommy had fun squeezing the clay and said it was “Cold” while Chloe excitedly tore pieces of clay off to make food to go in her frying pan. Towards the end of the week, the toddlers were able to spot changes to the incubating eggs seeing cracks appear and hearing the chicks tweet from inside. Can’t wait to see the chicks running around next week! 

The under twos have been busy exploring their senses this week. During an Easter painting activity using carrots, they dipped the carrots in paint and were rolling them across paper to make different marks and patterns. Amélie dipped her carrot into the paint and said “Dab dab dab”, Youcef then copied Amélie, smiling as he was very proud of his art work. The children also created lovely Easter eggs using cut potatoes. Some of them chose to hold on to the fork so they didn’t get as messy and Sebastian loved getting stuck in, waving it around. Otto carefully placed his potato on the paper, looking at the print it left behind. Margot held her fork up to gesture she wanted more paint and dipped it in before making different coloured patterns. 

During outside walks around the beautiful grounds and the duck pond, we went looking for the ducks to see if any ducklings had been born. Kitty kept shouting “Quack quack “, while Sebastian was pointing at the ducks swimming across the water. As the ducks came swimming over, Esmé threw the bread towards the water and began saying “Woo wee!” at the ducks. After the walk they stopped at the field and did some running, Kitty and Otto ran really fast across the grass, Kitty suddenly stopped and bent down to look at the small daisies in the grass, Amélie came over and was very curious and bent down next to Kitty to look at them too. 

The children have been popping in to look at the chicken eggs and waiting patiently for the chicks to hatch. In the meantime, they have been creating their own chicks using coloured glue and feathers. Sophie looked very confused as the sticky feathers stuck to her fingers and she shook her hands trying to get them off. Esmé and Amélie concentrated really well on where to place the feathers, holding them up to their faces to investigate them before sticking them down.