Sensory Walks and Experiences for Years 1-4 Curriculum Making Sense of the Living World Science and its relationship to technology Developing Scientific Skills and Attitudes Links to language, Art, Health & Physical Education Activity 1 Compare and describe the shapes, colours, textures and locations of: trees flowers nuts and berries mosses leaves rocks and stones ferns cones bark Activity 2 What birds can we see? Do we know their names? What trees or bushes do they seem to like the most? Listen hard to their songs. Can we immitate them? Record the birdsongs for a classroom identification game. Activity 3 Can we find any small animal or bird tracks? What animals or birds do we think made these tracks? Activity 4 What do we find if we look under leaves, bushes, logs and rocks. Tell pupils that this is the home of these insects/worms so we must not disturb them and be careful to replace the stone or rock carefully. Activity 5 Have pupils experience the feel and smell of leaves, rotting wood, leaf litter etc. Can they describe these experiences in words? Feel and describe different soils, eg sand, loam, wet, dry, clay. Activity 6 Enjoy lots of natural environment counting experiences such as: number of birds number of colours number of insects colours of flowers same type of trees and shrubs different trees in the grounds Recording Our Discoveries Make word mobiles of sounds, bird names, texture names, insect names … Make tape recordings of environmental sounds to play back in the classroom Make a fallen leaf collage and include captions describing the leaves Make pictograms to record the number of birds, insects and small animals found Make leaf and bark rubbings Go on library hunts to find books on trees, birds, insects and flowers. Read them together. Mime how birds, animals and insects move. Discuss how we are the same as and how we are different from plants. birds and animals. Make a large schematic map of the school grounds and have children draw pictures to complete the nature map. Add captions by each picture to show what was found, seen and heard at each place. Adopt a Tree Have each group of children or pairs of children choose their 'special tree' in the school grounds. Have them visit the tree once a week over the period of a year. Begin the visits by giving the children specific tasks to complete, eg make bark and leaf rubbings observe the birds it attracts find insects living on and around the tree what happens to the tree at different seasons measure the shadows it casts at different times of the day measure the distance around the trunk and keep a graph or table describe the leaves, berries, bark. twigs, seeds, new flowers … Help your pupils really enjoy their tree and enjoy and share the wonder of all the changes they see. Report on a weekly basis at 'TREE TIME' Do you have a lesson you would like to share with other teachers? Simply email us an attached Word, Works or PDF file and we will add it to our library. Don't forget to include your name and school so we can acknowledge your work.