Wind Power

All the seasons in one day greeted us at Forest School today!

We began by thinking what senses are stimulated by the wind. Martine said sometimes you can smell flowers when they are blowing in the breeze. Michael said that you can see the trees blowing and feel the wind on your face and blowing your clothes. Alex said that your can hear the wind blowing through the branches.

We all went off to different parts of the school grounds to observe how the wind stimulated our senses.
We heard birds tweeting in the trees, children playing in the nearby school, branches creaking and leaves rustling.
We saw the Iron Lady's clothes fluttering, trees swaying and ripples on puddles.

We thought about how wind helps nature. Martine said some plants need the wind to spread their seeds. We discussed how seeds can travel on the wind like winged sycamore seeds and fluffy dandelion seeds.
Next we went on a seed hunt to see how many different kinds of seeds we could find.

Once we had collected our seeds, we headed inside to sort them whilst having a cup of hot chocolate to warm up.

The children chose to sort their seeds by how they are dispersed. The groups were seeds that travel  by the wind, seeds that are eaten and pooed out (yes we can't resist discussing a bit of animal poop at Forest School!) by birds and animals and sticky or spiky seeds that attach to fur and clothing.  The Nature Detectives website has lots of fantastic resources to help you identify different seeds and their dispersal methods. We made created these handy ID dials to help with our seed hunting. Seed iDial
 Autumn is the best time to collect seeds as they are at their most abundant, but there are still plenty to be found at this time of year.

We couldn't let a windy day pass without making a kite. To tie in with last week's bird spotting session we decorated these bird kite templates before venturing back out in the wind and rain to test them out. The birds look wonderful flapping and spiraling in the wind. Bird Kite