We are pleased to announce that Westgate will be taking part in the RSPB’s Wild Challenge! Our children already love spending time outside, so we have decided to harness this interest with a challenge designed to encourage our children to explore, interact with and protect the environments around them.
To start, the Butterflies decided to take part in the RSPB Garden Bird Watch. The children spoke about the birds that they recognised – including magpies, seagulls, robins and blackbirds – before deciding to tempt more birds into our garden by scattering bird food (or granola left over from our breakfast morning!). We then spent nearly an hour looking out for birds in the garden and forest, with children using clipboards to make marks representing each bird that they saw: 14 blackbirds, 8 pigeons, a seagull and even a brave little robin!
When we finally came in to warm up, one child realised that magpies might be tempted to steal her shiny shoes! This prompted the children to make posters to display in the garden to warn the magpies away – they decided to cover the posters in foil to make sure the magpies read them!
The Garden Bird Watch engaged our children for a whole afternoon, and helped to develop so many skills:
- Personal, Social and Emotional – taking turns with the clipboards;
- Communication and Language – listening to the birds singing, subject-specific vocabulary (bird names and facts), recalling and sharing past experiences of birds;
- Physical Development – climbing hills and roaming the forest in search of birds, holding pens and recording the birds we spotted, writing warning posters, cutting and sticking foil;
- Literacy – ‘reading’ the bird fact files, writing warning posters;
- Mathematics – counting birds, recording ideas of number;
- Understanding the World – learning to care for British wildlife;
- Expressive Arts and Design – creating our posters!
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