Exploring the Swale...

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Published: Sunday, 19 May 2024 18:15

Written by Reception Class

This week the children in Reception have spent sometime exploring the schools very own swale area. There was a lot of excitement as we entered the swale gates and used our senses to explore the environment. Sometime was spent walking around the walkway noticing the different flowers, plants and trees that were growing. We identified an ash, willow and silver birch tree and even spotted a self seeded horse chestnut tree beginning to grow! There was a lot of talk about the different textures and shapes of the leaves and grasses that we discovered.

We loved spending time on the viewing platform over the water and spotted reeds, lily pads and iris flowering. Some of us were also thilled to spot a blue dragonfly, butterfly with white and orange tipped wings and a lilac moth!

We continued our journey around the swale and recalled phrases from the stories we have been learning in class when we went trip, trapping over the bridge and through the swishy swashy grass!

We collected some of the textured grasses and foliage on our journey and decided to create our very own nature paintbrushes. We enjoyed twisting and wrapping to attach the grasses to our twigs.

We are looking forward to using these next week to paint in the outdoor area to explore the marks that the different textures make. Some of us started to explore this, this week... it is great fun and good for our upper body physical development!

It was fabulous to be in the great outdoors... we certainly experienced all the joys of the British weather with the sun and the rain and this all added to the fun! As we settled down to make our paintbrushes we were treated to a visit from the beautiful blackbird who was singing away! Some of us even spotted two wood pigeons playing in the treetops and even had a very special visit from a beautiful red breasted robin who came to see what we were upto!

Finally we ended our session with some texture rubbings under the canopy of the trees!

We had a fabulous time and cannot wait to visit the swale area again!