We had a lovely week, weather wise at Nature School, this week. While the mornings are definitely getting colder, we did at least see some sunshine this week.
Together, Monday’s students and I read the story of Icarus who’s father built him giant mechanical bird wings to fly away. This story prompted a discussion about bird wings and a bird’s structure. How do birds fly? Did you know that birds have hollow bones to keep their bodies very light weight? We attempted to build a version of a bird’s wing in the form of a kite. While we could absolutely feel the lift of the kite when the wind blew, our kite was certainly not capable of enabling us to take flight!!
Our Chickadee’s took a closer look at the different colours and shapes of the leaves that are currently falling to the ground. We tried to match the leaf to the tree and made some lovely leaf necklaces. We built some great, high towers with a new set of natural building blocks and discovered new ways of making our towers stronger. Knocking them down is always the best part!
‘Spiders’ was the theme of Thursday. We read a story about a boy and a spider, we learned some interesting facts about spiders and we built some great spider webs that we can use as decoration for Halloween! Our days included some really nice nature walks this week, on which we discovered many new things including a great fort building and tree climbing spot. As always, we had some wonderful imaginative play. It is kind of funny because I am beginning to know what kind of animal each child is going to pretend to be before they begin! They are becoming predictable in that way but the stories they create always take us somewhere different.
~ Tara