Our “Virtual Nature School” Blog
Looking Through
“On our daily mile walk, the Little Adventurers stopped at Goathill Garden (a nearby enclosed garden with trees, bushes and picnic benches) to check if the bird feeder we had put there needed topping up. While we were there, the children enjoyed playing hide and seek in the bushes and running in amongst the trees. Looking through the bushes a child could see ‘a leaf’ and another child made vocalisations while looking through the trees. We went in search of other things we could look through. Some children peeked through the slatted wall and saw ‘cars’. A couple children looked through the gate and when asked what they could see, one child said they saw ‘sheeps’ (motioned at the clouds). Some children found a hole in the middle of the picnic table, they took turns to look down through it and saw ‘grass’ and ‘a stick’.”
“Following on from our walk to the community garden we made up a treasure box. We had all sorts inside, like magnifying glasses, old tinfoil tubes, red material and much more. We took the treasure box outside and left the children to explore the box for themselves at first. One child was looking through their magnifying glass and they said, ‘this thing makes it very big’. After a wee while of the children playing with the items, the adults then demonstrated looking through other items in the box. We modelled this behaviour without using any words at this point. We then started asking the question, ‘what can you see looking through there?’. One child looked through a popoid connector and said, ‘I can see you’. Another child did the same and said, ‘you’. One child filled a see-through tub with pasta and stones and said they can see ‘pasta and stones’ in it. We then encouraged them to start looking through the fence and the decking. The children then ran off to explore on their own, with one child for example, who went and looked through the gap in between two pillars.”
