Autumn Great Gardening Day:
Today was our first Great Gardening day of the new academic year. We have embraced the signs of Autumn that we have seen. We began the day noticing the drop in temperature and what the results of this are - darker mornings and colder air. Then, as our day progressed, we noticed how the sun began to shine and the temperature began to change! Our children have enjoyed a day immersed in activities that have gardening and wildlife at the heart. We hope you enjoy seeing what our day has entailed!
Autumn Gardening Day in Kits has been bright and colourful! We began our day exploring a tuff tray. Ruby had created an opportunity for the children to explore different types of flowers. The children loved to use their fine motor skills to grab, pinch and pull the petals from the heads. Of course - we sang as we investigated. Many of the children realised that if they shook the flower stems, the petals would fall by themselves. This also meant that the flowers would begin to smell strongly. We spent lots of time discussing how we could use our senses to investigate these stems further - ‘I can smell…’. During our afternoon sessions, we have been creative with potatoes! We dipped our potatoes into paints before using our gross motor skills to place and print. We have created wonderful pieces ready for our Learning Journey Masterpieces!
Rabbit's room has loved our Autumn Gardening Day! We started our day by being scientists. We used our investigation skills alongside Honey and Charlotte to undertake our own experiment. We made our way into the garden to plant some seeds. However, we planted these seeds in a completely different way! We used wet paper towels to wrap up our seeds before playing them in sandwich bags. We have attached these to our windows (making sure they will see the sun) and are ready to see what will be happening over the next coming weeks. In our Creative Area, we have used our collaging skills to look at different vegetables we can produce from outside and the bright colours we will see during our growing in Autumn. Carrots and broccoli were our focus. The bright greens and oranges were what we chose to use to collage our pictures.
As part of our Autumn Gardening Day, Hedgehogs have spent time exploring what we can produce from our gardens at this time of year. During Team Time, the children have explored a range of non-fiction books that allow the children to think deeper about the connections we can make between bringing our food from outside to our plates. We have explored pumpkins - fantastic at this time of year, broccoli - something we see on our plates almost daily and cabbages! To understand how these fruits and vegetables are produced, we have investigated seeds. We were able to draw comparisons around their differing shapes and sizes. There were wonderful discussions about what happens after we plant our seeds and what these will need to grow. Additionally, we discovered we can use our produce not only for eating! We can use our fruits and vegetables in a creative way. We have created beautiful pieces of art with our printing skills. Some of us even began to make ABAB patterns.
Foxes have been preparing for their Autumn growing! The children have been preparing and planting peas. We worked with Alex to gather the resources we needed in order for our peas to successfully grow. We prepared our potting area with soil and trowels. We used these to dig holes to plant our tiny seeds and create a bed for them. We gave them water and left them inside to watch them grow. Within the Creative Area, we used leaves gathered from outside to print and paint. Many of us used our imagination to draw plants, flowers and leaves from what we know of them.
