Caterpillar watch!

During the half term something very special has happened- our butterflies have hatched from their cocoons! All five of our butterflies have come out and spent the first day drying out their wings and practising opening and closing them.

With my daughter's help we collected some flowers from the garden and placed them in the butterfly garden with some sugar water for the butterflies to eat.

They are very beautiful painted lady butterflies. Over the next day the butterflies got stronger and where able to fly around the butterfly garden and climb up to the top of the net. It was now time to let the butterflies go into the wild where they would have lots of space to fly around and find food by themselves.

With Ellie's help I opened the butterfly garden and carefully took the butterflies out, some flew away straight away and others flew onto the plants in the garden.

Caterpillar watch!

Our caterpillars have now shed their skin and have made their cocoons; we have removed them from their container and pinned the paper disk they are attached to inside the butterfly house. They now look like this.

They will stay inside for 7-14 days; whilst inside they will make an amazing transformation, actually liquefying and morphing into a butterfly.

I hope they stay inside over the half term so that the children can see them emerge as butterflies, I will keep you all updated in case they decide to emerge early.

Busy bees!

This week we have been as busy as bees and learnt a lots about them too! Did you know that bees communicate by wiggling their bottoms in a dance?!

The children made some great paintings of bees and also got to practice making repeated patterns.

The children also made bee patterns using painted pasta which they threaded onto pipe cleaners.

The children really enjoyed our Teddy Bear's picnic and also wrote some fantastic invitations for their bears. The bears also enjoyed their honey sandwiches!

Our afternoon class went on their trip to the Horniman museum and were able to hunt for mini beasts in the Horniman bug garden.

We found slugs, bees, ants, centipedes, millipedes and spiders.

We hope you all have a brilliant half term break and our next topic is People Who Help Us. 

Caterpillar watch!

This week we have seen some incredible changes happen to our caterpillars. We came back from the weekend break to find that they had grown to double in size!

On Thursday we saw our caterpillars make their way to the lid of their container and hang upside down from it- this means that they will shed their skin for one last time then create their cocoon. It is very important that we do not disturb the caterpillars during this important phase as it takes two days for the cocoon to harden and can break easily.

Once the cocoons have hardened we will transfer them into the butterfly garden.

Caterpillars and butterflies

This week the children have been learning all about caterpillars and butterflies.

The children made some brilliant caterpillars from rolled up strips of paper.

The children have enjoyed making symmetrical butterflies by painting one side of a butterfly, then folding over the paper to make a symmetrical print on the other side. We also made butterflies by making hand prints onto paper and adding a pipe cleaner to make the butterfly's body.

On Thursday the morning class visited the Horniman museum for a mini beast workshop. Unfortunately the weather was not on our side and we couldn't hunt for mini beasts outside; but we had lots of fun looking close-up at some insect specimens and learning about the different body parts insects have.
                                        

 Our caterpillars are going to be painted lady butterflies when they emerge from their cocoons.

 Maria taught us about the different body part of some insects using large inflatable mini beasts.

 Some of the children volunteered to help at the front.

 The tarantula was bigger than our hands!

 This is a frog skeleton, it's bones are really tiny.

 We found out that badgers and moles like to eat some mini beasts. 

We know that spider have eight legs and lots of other insects have six legs.

Next week the children will learn about bees and the afternoon class will go on their mini beast workshop. 

Special visitors!

We have had some special visitors arrive in the nursery; we will be looking after 5 caterpillars!

We have set up a special area for the children to observe the caterpillars with information books and photographs and magnifying glasses.

Over the next month or so we will watch our caterpillars eat their food, grow to double in size, make a cocoon then emerge as a beautiful painted lady butterfly.

We will keep you updated with all the latest news from our visitors.

Ladybirds

Last week the children did lots of activities relating to ladybirds.

We made some spotty ladybirds by dipping sponge dabbers into black paint and printing onto red paper; we used the finished ladybirds to make a colourful display in the conservatory.

The children have loved using some programmable bug toys, they're controlled using a remote and we made it even more challenging by asking the children to drive their bug around an obstacle course made from wooden bricks.

For cooking this week we made rice cake ladybirds using red cream cheese and raisins to make the spots!

We have been developing our outdoor insect garden and added some mini beast spotter sheets, clipboards and pens.

Here are some more photographs from this week:

 Identifying the number and counting out the right amount of spots.

 Painting with cars.

 Cutting and sticking ladybirds.

Singing with Mr Croft.