Autumn Secret Garden Visits 2020

We’ve had a wonderful time in Autumn half term visiting our Secret Garden each week. It’s been great to see the changes that have happened through Autumn and as we go into Winter. We’ve also had a different focus each week for us to think about each week.

Week 1

We went to look for different Autumn colours in the Secret Garden. We had to look carefully to find the right shades of each colour.

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Week 2

We went to the Secret Garden again this time to look for treasures. We were allowed to have a look round and find objects which interested us to take back to Nursery to explore further.

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Week 3

This time when we got to the Secret Garden we found some Secret Symbols. We have to think very carefully to think what they might mean and who might have put them there. When we got back to Nursery we tried to write some Secret Symbols of our own.

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Week 4

We noticed that the trees had started to look a bit different. We were a bit unsure whether the trees were dead or not. When we got to Secret Garden we looked for buds on the trees and used the Twig ID sheet to try and work out which tree it was. We learnt the trees weren’t dead they were just having a rest for the Winter.

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Week 5

We practised our counting in the Secret Garden this week. Everyone was given a cup with a number (and the correct number of dots on) so we could see if we could count the correct number of objects into the cup. We were allowed to use whatever we could find in the Secret Garden.

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Week 6

This week we made some new friends to look after our Secret Garden for us over the Christmas holidays. Little did we know they’d be looking after it for a lot longer than that. We had to use our hands to make the clay stick to the tree which was a bit tricky on a cold day and then search for objects to make the face.

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We love our trips to the Secret Garden and can’t wait to get back up there soon to see how it has altered as the seasons have changes. What do you think it will look like there today?

We do also love listening out for our robin when we go up the Secret Garden. You can often hear him singing his song and if you’re lucky you can sometimes see him too.

Our Autumn Term Learning 2020🍂

We had a great time learning in school during Autumn term. Miss Parker followed the ideas of the children to guide our learning themes. Lots of what we learnt more about came from our observations of the world around us.

Have a look in our Floor Book to see what we have been learning about… Pumpkins, Fireworks, Poppies, Diwali, Light and Dark, Hibernation, Trees, Christmas and the Nutcracker ballet. Click on any of the pictures to see them enlarged.

You can see some close ups of our Christmas pictures here. We had so much fun with so many special events happening. Can you remember which your favourite was? A visit from Santa, it’s snowing!!!, our Christmas parties, our Christmas performances, decorating the tree, telling Christmas Stories.

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Noticing Autumn

We had all noticed lots of changes outside as Autumn started. Children started to comment as they came into Nursery. Miss Parker collected some of the items they brought and added to it on our Nature Shelf.

We decided to go to the Secret Garden to look for some different Autumn objects and everyone brought a leaf back to class.

We looked carefully at the different leaves and talked about what we could see. You can see our learning in the Floor Book.

We also decided to use our leaves to do some leaf printing back in Nursery.

The children enjoyed exploring the items on the Nature Shelf. They particularly loved the conkers and the pumpkins. We decided to focus on Pumpkins more the week after.

We looked very carefully at the pumpkins and tried to draw them. We also spent a lot of time talking about the pumpkins and thinking about as many words as we could to describe them.

What have we been learning? 

• About seasonal changes all around us. 
• To talk about what we can see using words and sentences. 
• To go on a visit in school to see a new places. 

How can you continue the learning at home? 

• Can you talk about the leaves we found? What colour are they? What shape are they? Do you know which tree they came from? 
• Which other signs of Autumn can you see? Go to the Park and see what is happening to the trees there.
• How many words can you think of to describe a pumpkin?