Our Centre was a hive of activity on Monday, 26th February when students from Clarendon Primary School visited for a special event day. Thanks to generous funding given by Help Nature Thrive we were able to offer this as a free session.
This year’s theme was ‘Nocturnal Animals’ and we had a variety of activities to engage the children throughout the day. Our main classroom was transformed into a night-time woodland using black out blinds, a moon and stars projector, animal soft toys and a recording of nocturnal animal sounds – this really sparked their imagination and got them thinking about the types of animals that come out at night in Richmond Park.
We were joined by the effervescent Olivia Armstrong, a professional storyteller whose enthusiasm and wonderful ideas, totally enthralled the children and helped to consolidate our learning objectives. Using props and musical instruments, the children were fully immersed into a night-time world! At one point they donned black capes, swooshing and squeaking around the garden, impersonating our pipistrelle bats! And we are all still humming the ‘Nocturnal’ song!
Our nature trail was filled with activities which focused on exploring the senses, these activities helped teach the children how senses are so important for a nocturnal animal’s survival. A favourite was pretending to be badger cubs with long snouts, searching for food. They learnt that badgers love to eat worms, beetles, mice and even fruit, making them omnivores. We looked for signs of badger activity on our nature trail, luckily, they had been busy the night before so there was plenty of evidence to point out!
Gemma, from the Help Nature Thrive team kindly joined us and bought along the famous ‘Guess Poo Done It’ game, a fantastic learning tool to get the children thinking about different animals and their diets. And of course, it caused much hilarity too!
It was a pleasure to welcome the children from Clarendon Primary School and a delight to hear them all using the word ‘nocturnal’ confidently by the end of the day!
We received lovely feedback from Juliet Harrowell, Assistant Headteacher:
‘Thank you so much for the fantastic visit last week. Holly Lodge is magical with the experiences you provide for our pupils. The range of activities engage all pupils, from the sensory storytelling, to the nature trail with a range of multisensory activities to really bring to life the experiences which pupils can recall and talk about for a long time afterwards.’
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