This week’s activities

Cleaning the bird bath

We are really happy that we are now able to use Wren Garden again now the weather has improved and we have had a donation of bark to cover up the muddy ground.  Wren Garden lends itself to lots of lovely natural resources and activities.  We are working hard to encourage wildlife to visit and set-up home in our garden and so this week the children helped to clean the bird bath.  The teacher explained why it was important to clean the bath so that the birds have clean water to drink and bathe in; avoiding them becoming ill, as, unlike people and our pets, our wild birds do not have any medicine if they become ill.

After thoroughly cleaning the bath, the children helped to fill it with fresh water. The children enjoyed the activity, learning about how we can look after our feathered friends and they are looking forward to seeing/hearing the birds that visit our garden over the coming months.  Hopefully we will see some young fledglings soon.

Our spring tree

The children have worked together to create a spring tree collage.  This activity developed over time.  Initially, some of the children visited the woodland area at the top of the school grounds.  Here they learnt how to take bark rubbings – you place your paper on the tree and by pressing with your crayon/pencil and rubbing it along the paper, you get the impression made by the bark.  Fascinating if you have never done this before.  The patterns can be very different, depending on the variety of tree.

A few days later, some of the children helped the teacher to cut out leaf shapes from the bark rubbings. They had to think about the shapes of leaves that they had seen in the woods and replicate them.  They carefully used the scissors to cut them out and made sure there was enough to cover a whole tree.  Lots of lovely fine motor skills and mathematical concepts here.

Finally, a couple of days after this, the children helped to stick the leaf shapes on to the outline of a tree to create a beautiful collage. This is now available for you to see on the whiteboard outside the front of the Pre-school building.

Photos of the above two activities are available on our website and Facebook page. Thank you.

End of term/start of new term

Don’t forget that we break up for the Easter holidays next Friday 1st April.  We return on Tuesday 19th April (even though the primary school will be closed).

We hope you have an enjoyable weekend and a lovely Mothers’ Day.

The Pre-school Team