Hedgehogs and hides…

17th November 2021

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Incredibly, Tuesday morning‘s session on hedgehogs began with finding and rescuing a real hedgehog! Children in Oaks were absolutely fascinated with what had happened to the hedgehog (he had been found tangled up in a net) and were very concerned about him. Once free of the net, we wrapped him up in a towel to keep him warm and put him in a hedgehog box along with some food and water. We took the opportunity to look closely at him and to talk about what had happened. We hope that he will recover from his ordeal and that the vet that is now caring for him will return him to health. 
Our two hedgehog activities involved using sticks to make hedgehog spikes.
 
Oaks children made holes in a pumpkin using a screwdriver and then carefully hammered sticks into the holes…we completed our hedgehog pumpkin by drawing a face.
 
We also used our fine motor skills on the second activity – making a cardboard hedgehog to take home. We stretched rubber bands around the hedgehog shape and then poked sticks behind and through the bands. We thought that our hedgehogs looked very cute!
Maples love their Wednesday mornings in Forest School. They were really interested in our bird activities last week- and during their reflection time at the end of the session, asked questions about camouflage and how to hide better so that they could watch the birds. So this week we learnt about camouflage and put it into action! 

First we played a game…we pretended to be birds and went flying off to look for hidden ‘worms’ on the ground. Each time one of the different coloured worms was found, it was placed on a board so we could see what order the colours were found in. We soon realised that the camouflaged ones were much harder to find!

We also chose a place in the woods to hide a paper bird…then tried hard to find ways to add colour to it so it was well camouflaged 
Maples worked together as a team to make this amazing bird hide,..all helping to decide what to do and how to put it up. We think it is pretty amazing! And it was put to good use during the morning 
Willows had a go at leaf shaking! We gathered together lots of leaves-we used the rakes and the wheelbarrow and scooped them up with our hands. We put them on a big tarpaulin and then worked together to make them bounce up in the air!