Conker Exploration!

This week to start off our autumn topic we began our activities by firstly asking the parents to collect some leaves and conkers so we could use them here. Thank you to everyone who collected and provided them to the preschoolers!

We began our activities by creating autumnal Hedgehogs. We firstly learnt about the hedgehogs and how they are nocturnal animals who have lots of spikes to protect themselves from predators. Preschoolers made playdough by helping to mix together the ingredients to make autumn playdough which included cinnamon for a lovely sensory experience. We then used our natural resources such as the conkers, leaves, twigs and bamboo sticks to create our hedgehogs with the playdough.  The children used mathematical language when counting how many eyes the hedgehog had, and also how many spikes they were creating.

For our next part into looking at the conkers, we spoke about their appearances, how some were ‘smooth’, some were ‘bumpy’ and some were ‘shiny’. Preschool then had the opportunity to create some beautiful artwork and roll them down the guttering and straight into the paint which rolled through and created lovely marks on the white paper. We started with paint on the paper but we noticed it wasn’t making a lot of marks, so we changed it around and instead put the paint onto the guttering so the conkers could roll straight through it and onto the paper instead. Preschoolers said “this way is better!” and “this is so fun!” We loved watching the conkers roll down however some didn’t roll straight down as they are bumpy and the children used their critical thinking to give them an extra push down so they rolled better. Overall preschool enjoyed this experience and it was so much fun!

Well done preschool!