Gathering Autumn Harvest

We are now into middle of October and still enjoying many delightful days. The children are excited and enthused by all around them and we are making the most of the the great outdoors.Spiders webs,snails ,worms and tiny beetles are examined  daily and they can spot the tiniest creature that I, as an adult fail to see.There was great excitement last week when Zav found a beautiful ladybird and just as we were going to place him on a rose bush to eat the greenfly, he opened his wings and flew away.From this simple observation I could tell the children that he belonged to the insect family,  had 2 pairs of wings which were” invisible”(transparent ) as it had come as a surprise to them when he flew off.The following day I introduced them to the life cycle of the ladybird…its wonderful when class material can be related to the real world!Earlier in October we picked the pears , huge crop and collected herbs to dry. We planted irises and tulips,racked up leaves and put the dead flowers in the compost.On Friday, we had a look in the veg beds to see what was left. There was genuine disappointment on finding that the caterpillars had vanished after gorging on the broccoli!We visit the horses, Ruby and Scobi most days..they are so friendly and enjoy the carrots and apples we bring them. This gives me an opportunity to name parts of the horse(a jigsaw and cards in school correspond to this lesson)The children have settled well and new work is being introduced on daily basis.It was Tadhg s birthday yesterday so we had a little party for him and then did  his story as he walked with planet earth around the sun 4 times!Some of the children have started the movable alphabet and really enjoying new challenges.The lessons on Grace and Courtesy are evident throughout the morning now as they work and it always lifts me when I see an older child help a younger one with something difficult .Today Zav saw that Ellie Rose was finding it hard to put on her slippers and he immediately came to her aid!