What's Happening in the Butterfly room

Butterflies 
 
Throughout the month of May the children within the Butterfly room embarked on a large-scale learning journey surrounding the various animals which can be found at the zoo and what each of the animals depend on. The children took part in using their technology skills to research various animals and explore their already known knowledge further. Some of the children took to information books to further their knowledge and find out new facts about their favourite animals. Within this learning journey the children enjoy various mark making, crafting, and painting opportunities which supported the progression of the children’s pencil control, formation of images, letters and numbers and encouraged further creativity and expression. 
 
Some of the children showed a strong interest within the story “Giraffes can’t dance”. After reading the story this led to lots of discussion surrounding how tall giraffes are in comparison to the children and how tall the children are in comparison to one another. To explore this interest further, the staff drew a large-scale giraffe on floor paper for the children to explore their height in comparison to the small giraffes.  Each of the children took a turn to lay down on the page so one of their peers could mark the height and each wrote their names next to their height measurement. This allowed for the children to explore the comparison of heights. We observed some fantastic numerical language from the children as they compared heights and showed a superb understanding of their comparison findings. 
 
We also explored our expressive arts through the use of role play and drama within the learning of zoo animals. Using wooden creates the children created a large create around our top garden stage. Once in Ashleigh read the ‘Dear Zoo’ story and the children used their body, facial expressions and voices to role play and mimic the various animals within the create in the story of Dear Zoo. The children thrived during this activity and asked for various other stories to be read which contained animals as they mimicked various species. 
 
As the sun has begun to shine across the month of May, the Butterflies have spent a large portion of the month within the local meadows. They have been exploring learning indoors and taking it outdoors to the meadows. Within the meadows the children have been creating their own marker boundaries to remain safe in lines with the SIMOA guidance. Caroline is continuing along her journey to become a Forest School Leader and hold learning sessions within the natural environments. 
 
Within the garden, the children picked lots of our spring flowers to begin planting the vegetables ahead of the summer months of growing. Once the flowers had been picked the children took turns to print the petal colours onto a white shirt and / or white sheet material. The children took turns to place the petal between to parts of the fabric before hammering the petal and allowing the colours to print onto the white materials. As they used the hammer the children show fantastic risk assessing and were able to remain safe whilst engaging in printing and exploring a new method of printing through the use of natural materials.