Snakes in the forest!

 Last week when the nursery children went to the forest, they helped find all the snakes that had escaped! There were 15! They listened to the story, 'The Gruffalo' by Julia Donaldson and were able to tell me that  the snake in the story lives in "a log pile house." Once the children found the snakes, they collected lots of stick, twigs and logs to make their own log pile houses for our escaped snakes. The children were able to link the snakes in the forest to a previous story we read about a girl called Miranda who brought a pet python to school. We spoke about how some people have pet snakes and some snakes live in the wild. The children were so excited about finding the naughty snakes and this encouraged lots of discussions around snakes. The children explored their gross motor skills in the forest by climbing trees and dragging logs to make snake houses. The forest is a great place for the children to use their imaginations, some of the children pretended they were playing the drums (wooden stools and sticks). Some children showed interest in finding mini-beasts that live in the forest. They tipped the logs upside down and found a range of mini-beasts including slugs, worms and woodlice. This supported conversation about how we treat and look after living creatures. The children understood it was not kind to stamp or poke them. This was a great link with our animal topic this term. We had so much ssssssnakey fun!