Term 5 at Cashmore Early Years Centre has been all about planting and growing, and the children across all of our groups have been throwing themselves into it with real enthusiasm!
The children have been planting beans and peas into pots, watering them with jugs and watching them sprout over two weeks into tall, green stems that everyone is incredibly proud of. They have since been planted outside in the hope of producing some yummy beans to eat! Cress seeds have been sprouting on cotton wool too, with the children using pipettes to water them and marvelling at how quickly they shot up.
Natural materials have been a brilliant focus for sensory exploration, with the children examining leaves, flowers, bark and pinecones up close, and using magnifying glasses to spot tiny details they would otherwise miss. The children have also been learning about the important role that bugs play in the world of plants, discovering how worms enrich the soil, bees pollinate flowers and snails munch through leaves. They have explored bug figures, real bugs preserved in resin and had a go at drawing what they could see, which produced some wonderful results.
Garden hunts have uncovered tall trees, tiny purple flowers and the exciting shoots from the garlic plants, and a range of non-fiction books have helped the children learn about how plants grow, the different parts of a plant and the wonderful variety of plant life around them.
Stories have been woven throughout the term beautifully. All groups enjoyed Jasper’s Beanstalk, learning how to care for plants alongside Jasper. Giraffe and Hippo Group read Titch, picking up key planting vocabulary along the way, and Tiger and Zebra Group have loved Superworm, following the story of this brilliant bug hero and his friends as they defeat the Wizard Lizard!
To top it all off, we were very lucky to have Claudia from Children’s Kitchen visit to help plant strawberries, tomatoes and peppers in the back garden and peas and celery in the main garden. The children are now busy making sure their plants get plenty of sun and water, and we cannot wait to see what grows!
