On Wednesday this week, we had Nicky and Amanda come from the RSPB to do some colour searching in our outside area.

To start off with Nicky read a very interesting story to the children who joined in enthusiastically with questions and answers. Then we divided into 2 groups, the ones that stayed inside decided to make tea and coffee plus some cakes for those outside, one child buried his ‘man’ with leaves that we had found earlier and we spent time looking for him.

The children outside each had a paper bag with a colour card in it. The idea was that the children would search around and see if they could find all the colours on the card from natural things that are outside.

We found lots of things- yellow, red, green and brown leaves, some of them were nearly orange; grey, black and white feathers; lots of sticks- large, small, long and thin- some were easy to break, others were quite ‘bumpy’; white flowers; and a very long wriggly worm- we decided not to collect him!!!!

Then we sat down and looked at what Amanda had found in her garden that morning. We all carefully touched the spiky shell of a conker and were amazex at how soft the inside bit was. We fitted the conker into its case too. We touched the spiky leaves of the holly tree and spotted the red berries. We made a hedgehog out the pieces we found, using conkers as his eyes and then covered him with leaves ready for his hibernation. The children loved learning and talking about what they found, what everything felt like and how we had to be careful of the hedgehog when he was hibernating.

Back inside we listened to some some bird songs and tried to work out which bird it was. We talked about the robin who visits us daily sometimes popping in as we set up the hall in the morning.

The children loved having the two ladies in and are looking forward to their next visit. Thank you so much to Amanda and Nicky.