Changing Trees

This nature inspired small world activity is a great way to start understanding the changes a tree goes through as the seasons change. And also how trees are important to the living things around them.

Set Up

For this nature inspired small world activity I used the green, pink and red play dough from our April’s Changing Tree’s activity box. We also used the card leaves, wooden tree, owl, ladybirds and bees. No other set up required apart from getting all the bits out ready to be played with.

The first task involved transforming our tree into a spring tree; beautiful blossom flowering and then new leaves growing. We looked outside the window to see if we could see any blossom outside. Rolling the tiny blossom flowers is a great work out for fingers and great for fine motor skills development.

Then from where the blossom had been grew our apples. We talked about how the apples grew from where the blossom had been. We also talked about how the tree needed the bees for pollination and without them we would not get any apples. There was in fact so much science involved and so much to learn that we will be repeating this focusing on the important role that the leaves play next time! Once our trees were finished the girls really began to play. F set about putting the ladybirds to bed, each with their own leaf to sleep on. M started using the left over play dough to squish the bees and ladybirds into and then taking some away each time to create her own maths number sentences.