Thursday 22 January 2015

Garden Bird Watch Week



This week is the RSPB garden Bird Watch Week so we adopted a bit of a winter bird theme. We started off by making some bird feeders to attract the birds to the garden. 


 The children used their fine motor skills to place peanut butter around pine cones with spatulas. They then spread and sprinkled bird seed over the cones to hang in the garden. However, rather than attracting birds we did tend to attract the squirrels!


We then visited the bird hyde at Saltram house where the children looked at the numerous birds with their binoculars. Although we spotted numerous geese and ducks we also saw some garden birds including a lovely Robin (pictured above). 

Finally the children looked at some bird spotting sheets and coloured in some pictures of a variety of birds with the older children creating their own bird pictures.  

Wednesday 14 January 2015

Snowmen and Penguins!


After a chilly winter morning in the park we decided to warm up with a little winter craft sessions. The children were rather disappointed that we did not get snow in this part of the country today so we first decided to make our own snowmen with the help of some cottonwool. 


I placed all the items out for the children and let them design their own snowmen. Whilst some resembled the traditional approach, the younger children just enjoyed the sticking activity and designed their own version!


The children love using their hand and footprints so we next set about our footprint penguins - this caused much hilarity due to some very ticklish feet! After decorating their penguins we used this activity to continue awareness of letter sounds. The children practised saying the 'p' sounds, tried to think of other words beginning with this sound and then attempted to write the letter.