Mini Beasts

Personal Social and Emotional

Explore how minibeasts might feel in a range of different scenarios. Explain to the children that minibeasts are wild, fragile creatures and that we need to be careful and quiet around them. As you explore minibeasts outside, encourage children to notice and recognise differences between the creatures they find. Talk about size, colour, patterns and any specific features, such as wings.                 

Communication and Language     

Using the Minibeast Flashcards. Ask children explore and discover minibeasts in their outdoor space, they can choose the cards from the table to represent which creatures they have found. Discuss what minibeasts they have found and where they discovered them.

Physical Development

Create holes in card shaped leaves using a hole punch and then add wool caterpillars for children to weave in and out of the holes.    Observe a range of minibeasts as they move. Children can then try moving like them. For example, they could climb over equipment and use large-muscle movements as well as running on grass and pretending to fly, using flags and streamers to act like their wings.

Literacy

Provide large rolls of paper and mark-making tools for children to draw and represent the different creatures they find in their outdoor space, drawing freely and creating meaningful marks.    Sing the rhyme ‘Incy Wincy Spider’.

Mathematics

Using leaves and small world minibeasts, place different minibeasts on leaves and count saying one number for each item to find the total amount.   Provide a selection of minibeast small world toys and encourage the children to sort them into sets – maybe based on colour, size, wings, legs, etc.                                                     

Understanding the World 

Take time to enjoy bug hunts in the little forest area and local green spaces. Encourage children to explore different places, including looking down low, underneath objects and digging in the soil.

Expressive Art and Design

Using paint, glue and different media, encourage the children to make an insect such as, a spider, a bee, a butterfly, and a worm. Provide a tray with natural materials, such as logs, leaves, sticks and grass along with small world minibeasts. Using their imagination, children can create little worlds for the animals to live in and then create simple stories about the creatures.

Focused Vocabulary

Butterfly, spider, worm, caterpillar, ant, dragonfly, earwig, slug, fly, smail, bee, beetle, crane fly, wasp, woodlouse.