Over the past few weeks we have been focussing on our native, nearby bugs and understanding how and why we should be kind to them.

This week we have taken our nets to the pond to see what pond life we have in our waters. Before we entered our pond area I discussed with the children our pond rules and what we need to remember to stay safe around water. These are:

We must lie on our fronts when looking into the pond
We don’t stand too near the pond edge
We don’t try and get into the pond.

The children listened and showed good understanding and acknowledgment of everything we had said to them.

Once we were there the children lay on their tummies and already I could hear them talking about their findings. “Look a snail!” “I can see a fish!” it was very interesting to hear what they had seen because this is a conservation pond which means that the pond life has found their own way there. Meaning no fish or ducks at the moment.

I collected some water in a container and placed this on the side and told the children the importance of putting their findings in water. I asked the children why this is important and one child said “because that’s where they sleep.” Once we had caught things we looked into our container to see what we had found! On Monday we found 2 newts, the children were amazed by them. During the week we also found tadpoles, snails, dragon-fly larvae, water boatmen and worms.

During our bug/pond hunting we have seen so much consideration and care coming from our toddlers that we are super-duper proud of the empathy they are starting to foster at such a young age. They have shown great care for our small friends.

Thanks for reading,

Lauren