This week our caterpillars arrived at nursery and the Ponies have been learning about their life cycle stages and using magnifying glasses to observe them closely. We've discussed their appearance and will continue to explore their development over the next week. 

To extend on the arrival of the caterpillars, today the Ponies went on a trip to the forest to do some butterfly hunting and wildlife exploring. We found a nice sunny patch where loads of butterfly’s were fluttering around. We used our nets to gently try to “catch” the butterflies, and observed them carefully from a distance- the butterflies we did see up close were closely examined using magnifying glasses where the children were able to recall their colours, and features such as spots which they enjoyed counting. They learnt to be gentle with the butterflies and had so much excitement seeing so many!

After this we visited the duck pond and fed the ducks, where we saw even more butterflies which landed on some of the children who were being very calm and still!

Along with butterflies we saw ducks, grasshoppers, beetles, bumblebees and a huge dragonfly! It was such a special experience for the children and some of them even said “maybe we can release our butterflies here”.