A is for Amazing Animals
Animals are just amazing. And whether it’s cute fluffy ones, giant prehistoric ones, mythical ones or famous ones – they never fail to excite our children and inspire our learning here at Footsteps!
At Footsteps Maple Cross we have been lucky enough to have the real thing with our very own Footsteps pets – Eddie and Hopper. Our new guinea pig friends have been very popular with regular opportunities for cuddles. It is a great way to show the children that having a pet can be fun – but lots of work too. We have been learning to care for them as well as learning lots about their natural habitats, what they eat and how to hold them nicely.
Inspired by our furry friends we have been sharing all about the pets we have at home with our human ones. We have created a display board with photos of our Footsteps pets and animals have been some of our favourite pictures to colour too.
We have taken cue from the colder weather to look at Arctic animals. We have played with Winter animals in the tuff tray, hiding them in the cotton wool snow and lots of other small world play too. We used our IT sessions to watch a clip on polar bears, created a polar bear dance and made polar bears using pom poms to paint with to get a fur effect.
As ever, Dinosaurs make a frequent appearance on our children’s interest list, and we are always amazed how much we know. At Oving we enjoyed making dinosaur prints in the Playdough, naming the dinosaurs and even matching them with their footprints. We have used them to practice our big and small concepts, counting and colouring skills!
These aren’t the only large animals we have talked about as we began our Chinese New Year preparations with lots of activities around dragons. There were some super cutting skills on show. We also talked about the other animals that form part of the Chinese Calendar.
Outside at Watermead, we have enjoyed our worm garden. We have been digging them up and some of the children have been brave enough to hold them. For those that like their animals a little less wriggly, there has been the opportunity to take our mascot – Connor Bear – home for the weekends. He has been on lots of lovely adventures.
The children loved making bird feeders from toilet rolls to hang in the trees, bird baths and muddy bird biscuits. The children were so excited to regularly go outside to fill up the bird feeders and making binoculars to see if we can spot the birds coming to use them.
On Wednesday 18th January we celebrated Winnie The Pooh Day. Leighton Buzzard did a bear hunt around the garden and played That’s not my bear until we found him. They also made Bear faces from natural materials, created a honey pot and fished out bees and read Pooh Bear stories. At Chalfont we made Winnie The Pooh faces out of cut up pieces of paper and bees out of stones, paint and pipe cleaners. Honey on toast for snack.
All in all our adventures have been an animalazing success!!
