Pre School have been exploring ‘Signs of Spring’ and ‘Minibeasts!’

Mini Beasts and Signs of Spring

Pre school have been very busy little explorers the past few weeks. They have been exploring mini beasts and learning lots about ladybirds in particular, and also looking for signs of spring in lots of creative and exciting ways.

Photography: Pre School have been out and about using the Ipads to take photographs of the signs of spring while they explore our beautiful grounds. They have spotted daffodils blooming, the magnificent magnolia flowers, colourful camellias, dainty daisies and lots, lots more. Have a look at their wonderful photos below!  The children also spotted squirrels playing in the sunshine, and listened to bird song as they walked through the woods.We have challenged Pre School to see if they can get a sound recording of the woodpecker who is living in our trees too!

Minibeast Investigation: The children have been taking out magnifying glasses to look really closely for mini beasts as well as flowers and buds. We are very impressed with their photography skills in particular!  They have also been practicing recording what they’ve found using pencils and clipboards too. The children have spotted woodlouse, ants, bees, worms to name a few!

Counting: There has also been so much counting happening in Pre School, they have been counting in lots of different ways:

• Painting spotty ladybirds with lots of legs!
• Making playdough ladybirds with indented spots made by pencils or with spots made by rolling little balls of dough, Adding lots of legs to playdough ladybirds
• Counting spots on ladybird counters and matching boards, as well as counting spots on dice and cards in the Ladybirds Board game!
• Counting wings and spots on their butterflies as they paint them, some of the children have been talking about ‘symmetry’ too as they make paint prints with their butterflies.
• Making bug houses with shapes and talking about the different colour and shape ‘rooms’ in the houses. The children have been counting how many sides and corners different shapes have such as squares, triangles and rectangles, also using words such as ‘long’ and ‘short’ when looking at the sides on rectangles.

What a lot of counting and comparisons. Well done everyone! There has been lots of discussion about ‘more’ ‘lots’ and ‘less’ too. Some children are starting to recognise numerals and match quantity to numerals too. Super maths pre school!

We can’t wait to hear what you learn about minibeasts and spring next!