Fledglings at home

When we were unable to continue ‘Friday Fledglings’ our outdoor session for pre-schoolers in our fantastic urban garden on site, our session leaders started creating weekly resources for young families at home on Facebook and via a series of sessions on Zoom.

These amazing resources are below and we hope they inspire you to explore the outdoors with your under-5s and provide you with some activity ideas.

We’d love it if you could share your work with us in our Friday Fledglings Facebook group. There is no expectation that you will follow the set way of doing these creative activities and if your children use the resources in a totally different way, we would love to see these too.

Craft from pilot session – Roll the Mole into a Hole!

We hope you enjoy viewing the activity films again. Click here to access the mole template.

Craft from 5 March session – Woodpecker in a tree

After watching the activity films download and print the templates to start making your own woodpecker in a tree!

Can you hear the woodpecker?

For those who have visited our museum before, you will hopefully remember our beautiful Seasons animated film in our first gallery. For those who haven’t, you are in for a treat! Listen out for the woodpecker in the woodland… You will need to access it via the MERL’s free app and more details can be found here: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/galleries/shaping-the-land/

Craft from 12 March session – Climbing and sliding spiders

Print out the spider templates to colour in and cut out, then make them climb and slide!

Craft from 19 March session – Egg box flowers

We hope the films inspire you to make your own flowers from recycled materials. Print the template for the flower base, or you can always come up with your own.

First make the base…

…then make the colourful flowers bloom!

Craft from 26 March session – Land Art and bubbles

Inspired by the session today why not make your own kingfisher and fish out of natural materials, plants and flowers. You could also make your own bubble art using homemade paint with cornflour, water and food dye. Some messy fun outdoors!

Craft from 23 April session – Growing from seed

Have fun growing cress from seed and making your own pots from cardboard tubes. Do the seeds grow more quickly on the paper or in compost?

Craft from 30 April session – Frog life cycle mobile

Listen to the sounds of some very happy frogs who have come to live in Fong’s garden pond.

Thank you to Arts Council England and the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund for making this possible.