One of our little poppets found a snail whilst walking to nursery and brought it in for everyone to see. It stemmed our curiosity and we wanted to learn more about snails. We looked at its shell and described what we could see. We thought about what other minibeasts we already knew and made our own checklist. We went into our nursery garden and we hunted for more minibeasts to observe. We were very good using our positional language, searching up high, on the ground and underneath logs.

Afterwards we enjoyed making our own snail collage, cutting and sticking pieces of paper to form a spiral just like our snail.

We understand that child-initiated learning is important, and in order to do that, we follow the children’s interests which can often change plan for that day. By doing this we are able to engage the children in first hand learning experiences which enables them to interact for longer, promote their confidence and self-esteem and develop their communication skills.