Exploring Winter (Reception)
This is a hands on day that explores winter at Skelton through lots of outisde activities (weather permitting) including looking for animal tracks and trails, making bird feeders and reading stories. All the activities encourage the children to explore the nature around them, to understand the features of winter and to think about how the natural world will change as the seasons progress.
This day supports delivery of the EYFS framework including the EYFS principles and learning and development requirements, particularly Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Available for Reception classes December to February.
What the day involves
The day begins with an introduction by the day leader, welcoming the children to the Centre and explaining what will be happening in the day. We have a general discussion about winter timer, and have a warm up game.
The class is then split into groups (normally four groups, depending on class size) for the remaining activities: Animals in winter - hibernation, Animals in winter - tracking, Birds in winter, Trees in winter.
Animals in winter - hibernation
How do animals survive over the cold months? We will be discussing what kind of animals are sleeping over the winter and what kind of homes they use while they are hibernating. We will create our own hibernation den and read stories about what it is like for animals over winter time.
Animals in winter - tracking
Even though many animals are sleeping, some animals do not hibernate and need to wake up and find some food. In this session we search for evidence of animals in the Skelton nature garden. We will look for animal tracks, and make our own painted tracks. We will have a good explore looking for burrows, holes, scrapes, droppings, nibbled seeds and old nests and see if we can work out who has been wandering around.
Birds in winter
We will be looking out for birds at Skelton Grange who stay here throughout the cold winter months, and find out how we can help look after the birds in winter. We will watch for birds and listen for their songs and make some simple bird feeders to take home or back to school.
Trees in winter
We will be exploring the world of trees in winter, reading a story about trees dropping their leaves and seeing if we can work out which trees are of the same type even if they do not have any leaves on. We will also do some bark rubbings for the children to take home.
Visit our Links page to find some fun ideas for pre-visit or follow-up activities!
