Our garden is awash with lovely blooming Spring flowers at the moment and so now we are seeing some lovely minibeasts in the garden as a result. Today was our first sighting of a lovely fat bumblebee and this beautiful butterfly which landed on our outdoor kitchen earlier this week which served as the inspiration behind todays butterfly activities. The children made some lovely tissue paper butterfly sun catchers, enjoyed a lovely butterfly puzzle, had fun with butterfly stickers, looked at butterflies in books and watched an episode of Mr Tumble, who was at a butterfly farm, on CBeebies.

Areas of Learning covered: Understanding the World, Physical Development, Communication & Language, Literacy, Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Expressive Arts and Design

The children love stickers here at Aston Childcare which are great for developing fine motor skills (Physical Development) and earlier this week our sticker theme was Minibeasts which got us talking about spiders, butterflies, beetles, bees, caterpillars, centipedes……

To extend this activity and their learning we then went off and completed our lovely Minibeast puzzles.

Whilst Winter’s not the best time of year for a bug hunt  (late spring, summer and early autumn are the best times) it did make me reflect on what other activities we do over the course of the year to learn about and explore Minibeasts –

• The children learn about Minibeasts in books such as children’s classics Incy Wincy Spider and The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Our set of Animal index books help with bug identification
• We made a wormery in the garden to help us observe worms which was great fun.
• We have jumbo tweezers, magnifying glass and a magnifying bug box to look at our lovely critters!
• The children have made some fab bug hotels
• The children enjoy creating minibeasts during our Arts and crafts sessions such as spiders out of pipe cleaners!
• The children enjoy painting minibeasts
• Snail shells form part of our current nature tray
• The children enjoy completing minibeast puzzles
• The children learn about the Life cycle of various minibeasts with our Life cycle puzzles and Life cycle ink stamps
• Visits to local attractions to see flowers are ideal for spotting minibeasts such as bees and butterflies
• Visits to our local park and wooded areas are the ideal place to explore – finding minibeasts anywhere with trees and shrubs or in long grass or turning over logs and stones.

Areas of Learning covered: Expressive Arts and Design, Maths, Understanding The World, Communication & Language, Literacy, Physical Development, Personal, Social and Emotional Development