Butterfly Life Cycles

Even the youngest of children are often fascinated by butterflies and the children here are no exception. This gives the perfect way in which to start to teach them about life cycles, something that will enable them to connect with nature as they develop and start to gain an understanding of basic science. 

We started with 5 caterpillars that the children came and counted on a daily basis as well as commenting on their size and their movement. We talked about the food that the caterpillars were eating and the fact that we must not put them in the direct sun. It is important that the children can relate such activities to the outdoor environment and we were lucky enough to find some caterpillars on one of our trips to the local nature garden at the park. 

Whilst our caterpillars grew and became chrysalises we undertook a range of age-appropriate activities with older ones discussing the life cycle order for the caterpillars from egg through to butterfly with the aid of our toy models and appropriate picture books through to painting butterfly pictures for the younger children. 

Finally our butterflies all hatched safely and, having fed them with flowers and orange juice, it was time to release them to the wild, something that the children particularly enjoyed. 

Other life cycles that we have covered this term include that of the frog with several visits to Saltram House to view the frogspawn and subsequently tadpoles and frogs together with that of fruit, predominantly focussing on strawberries and a trip to the local pick your own.

Dartmoor Zoo

This morning we went on a visit to Dartmoor Zoo. The children had a great time looking at the animals. 

It was so quiet they were able to run around as they please in the large amount of woodland at the site. The children listened quietly to the otters and tried to impersonate the noises that they made!

The children, even our 12 month old, particularly enjoyed the comical meerkats who were darting about when they saw the children coming! They were not so keen on the large lion though, even though he was sleeping!

At the end they had a long play in the lovely natural climbing area at the site. After a lovely morning they were all shattered. 

Paignton Zoo

Today, much to the delight of the children, we had a fantastic visit to Paignton Zoo. We love visiting new places as it prompts the children to ask so many questions that they wouldn't  had they been in the same environment each day. enabling them to understand their world so much better. They wanted to know the answers to many why the stalk stood on one leg through to why the gorillas were indoors!

We looked at a wide range of animals ranging from the crocodiles and elephants through to monkeys and giraffes with the children particularly enjoying the very large elephants and the active monkeys. They also enjoyed measuring their height to see what animal they were similar too in size - we had a lot of tigers!

The children were not so sure about our lunchtime visitor - the peacock! Although we agreed he looked spectacular he was determined that he would share our lunch!

These two year olds were having so much fun that they didn't once complain about the 3 miles that we ended up walking, jumping and running but they did all grab a snooze on the way home after singing a rendition of monkeys jumping on the bed!

Autumn Sensory Tray

Once again, inspired by the many online blogs, I have managed to create another new sensory experience for the children that focusses on Autumn and includes some of their Autumn findings from our many walks outside. 

I combined lentils and a dried soup mix to create some lovely colours for the ground, added some conkers, cones twigs and leaves as well as our new set of woodland animals. 

The children absolutely loved the animals and it was these that got the most attention. Some of them they knew and others they asked. They then set upon other activities such as feeding then animals and burying the conkers as well as simply running the beans through their hands. 

Another fab addition was our new number logs and these proved a great hit for stacking as well as prompting conversations about the numbers that the children could recognise.