Snails, Bird Nests & Building Houses!

Over the last couple of weeks, the preschool children have shown a particular interest in caring for the bugs and insects that have made their homes in the nature areas of the garden. The children have spent quite some time using magnifying glasses to aid them when finding some smaller insects. Luna has taken a particular interest in wanting to care for the snails and slugs and at snack time whilst she was eating her cucumber, Luna suggested to her friends, “I have a good idea, I think we should save some cucumber for the snails and slugs” and that’s exactly what they did! Placing a couple of portions of cucumber around where the snails and slugs were, Flo, Rowan, Daniel and Luna waited patiently and were very pleased with themselves when the snails made their way over. Daniel asked, “Do snails have teeth to eat cucumber?” Rowan promptly replied, “They do have lots of teeth but we can’t see them because they are so small”. Whilst quietly concentrating to observe what the snails were doing, a couple of children could hear very small tweets close by, followed by a small bird going in to one of the bird houses which led the children on to discover that there was in fact a birds nest in one of the bird houses! Upon discovering this, Sadie instantly checked that the bird feeder was full and was relieved to find that it was, letting her friends know, “That’s a good job, the birds won’t be hungry!”. 

The preschool children engaged themselves in a mark making activity this week, some children choosing to use their fingers and others using paintbrushes. Sophie used her finger to drawer a ‘S’ in the tray and then attempted to copy this using her paintbrush. After a first attempt, Sophie looked at Finley and said, “It’s a little bit more tricky using a paintbrush”. Finley reassured Sophie, “It’s ok, try again, if you keep trying it will work!”. This is exactly what Sophie did and very quickly realised after just a few attempts that she was able to draw an ‘S’ with the brush. Sophie then went on to writing her whole name with the paintbrush with Finley praising her, “Well done, Sophie, I told you you can do it!”, both of them smiling at each other and Sophie returning the praise, “Finley, you did your name too” and gave him a clap. 

Outside in the garden, a group of children worked together to make a house using the wooden blocks. At first Freddie collected some of the flat blocks and placed them on the floor. Alfie observed for a moment and then suggested to Freddie, “How about we use these ones, they are bigger and taller and will hold the house together better”. Freddie thought for a moment before agreeing, “Yeah, let’s do that”. Together they collected the biggest blocks from the pile and placed them in a square shape as the base of the house before building up. By this point, they had piqued the interest of quite a few of the other children, who were all keen to help out to make a house. Once they had worked very well together to build the walls, Isaac said, “Now we need a roof, but we need to find bits that are long enough to cover the walls!”. Working their way through the block pile, Isaac found the perfect ones, telling his friends, “These ones are perfect, they are just the right size”, whilst placing them on top to finish their house.