November’s Wildlife Tots was all about how different animals prepare for the winter. After getting slightly messy with the paint, creating leaf prints and leaf rubbings indoors, we headed outside and positioned a number of mammal traps around the building – we had prepared these especially for the wood mice and bank voles, who stay active all year round, filling them with lots of cosy hay and some tempting bird seed!
We then pretended to be squirrels, hiding our acorns (or pasta shells) in various secret places to see if we could locate them again later – a test of our squirrel-ness! We searched for natural holes, hid them under leaf litter and looked for crevices in tree bark.
It was then time to head over to our willow wood, to make a cosy home fit for a hedgehog to hibernate in. We collected lots of different natural materials, including grasses and soft and cosy moss to turn into an animal home, before placing a film canister (our pretend hedgehog!) filled with hot water inside.
Whilst our pretend hedgehogs stayed in their homes, we delved into the clay pit to make hedgehog sculptures to take home:
It was then time to re-take the temperature of the water inside our pretend hedgehogs. It had started off at a whopping 54 degrees Celsius, cooling down to somewhere between 17 and 22. Although the temperature had dropped, they all did a really good job at keeping their hedgehogs cosy and warm!
It was then time to head back to the Centre, to check the mammal traps we had put out (sadly we were unsuccessful at catching anything this time!) and to search for the acorns we had squirreled away. Almost all of them were found, with the lost few remaining in the undergrowth. We were brilliant squirrels, but were reminded about how important squirrels, and in particular jays, are at helping the oak tree, as the ‘lost’ acorns are able to then germinate in the ground.
Thank you Wildlife Tots for a lovely day!
Kenya, Sam and Olivia being scary!
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 