Alphabet activities formulated around the world of natural

a. Apple picking; collecting acorns, growing acorns; adventure play areas. Ant activities are amusing. Preferably locate an active ant colony, then invite the children to choose places to leave 3 sticky sweets (or over ripe apples) in the garden to attract the ants. Build ant activities for the ants along their trails from their home to the sweet/apple once the ants have shown an active interest, and observe the ants activities. Grow Aloe Vera plants and use some of the inner gel to make hand lotion or sooth stinging nettle stings.
b. Beautiful butterflies – visiting a butterfly farm. Beautiful bulbs. Can big black Beatles bite? Building bird boxes for the baby birds. Placing a TV camera into a successful nesting box. Observation of buzzing bees in the beehives. Picking blackberries or wild bilberries on the mountains.

Use brown bricks to build the letter ahapes b, bl,br,& B
c. Creepy crawlies climbing on my coat. Collecting conkers from the Chestnut tree. Cleaver caterpillars create cocoons and become chrysalises. Counting cows in a field, or at the dairy in the yards and as they stand in the milking parlour. Collecting cones. Carefully catching crabs. Collecting cascading catkins which can be used to make pollen pictures on the stick side of stick back fabric pinned flat on a board. Grow cactus from seeds, they look incredibly sweet and do not have dangerous sharp spikes.
d. Do donkeys daydream? Yes! Donkeys do daydream Do donkeys like doing work? No! Donkeys don’t like doing work. Do donkeys like carrying drums? Yes! Donkeys do like carrying drums Do donkeys like eating grass? No! Donkeys don’t like eating grass. Visit some donkeys; growing Daffodils and drawing Daffodils as they develop from the daffodil bulbs. Designing a dam (and then building it across a small stream). In order to protect the natural habitat this dam may need to be discretely dismantled by the organiser at a later date. Digging for diamonds. Bury crystals in a large sand pit and invite the children to use tools and sieves to dig for diamonds. Digging out dirty ditches – ideally find a real situation with a real purpose so the children’s efforts can be appreciated and meaningful. Ducks and Drakes duck and dive down deep (in the water).

e. Exploring is easy and enjoyable. Organise a special exploring outdoor activity with a few gentle challenges. Enormous elephants – find a real elephant the children can visit and experience up close and hopefully get to feed and possibly have a ride on. Go egg collecting at a local farm or smallholding and use the eggs for cooking activities. Blow eggs and decorate them, goose eggs have relatively strong shells and a good quality surface for painting.

f. Finding fire wood in the forest. Frying food/fritters on the fire this could be a pretend game using the firewood found in the forest. Share Personal Finding fish stories, watch the fish at the pet shop in their aquariums. Making and painting model fish for a magnet fishing game. Share Finding frogs stories, listening to individuals person stories of their own experiences. Look for frogs in a garden or around a pond. Make a small pond then collect a small quantity of frogs spawn and watch the tadpoles develop into miniature frogs develop in the pond or an aquarium. Put one drop of iodine in the water to help the tadpoles develop successfully. Book (and outside play ground activity):Flip Flops Secret. This story explores social interactions and differences through a story about Flip Flop the Frog. It is a great story to act outside with the children using different sit-on and ride toy vehicles.
Finding fungi. Finding Ferns. Finding flowers. Documenting what has been found on a site as well as bring some examples back where appropriate. Be clear with the children to indicate what they have found without disturbing it, then if the organiser needs the specimen for the special take home collection is can be collected carefully and kept in the adult’s safe keeping.
g. Growing green grasses. Gooseberry picking or planting of gooseberry bushes for a gooseberry picking activity next year. Making gooseberry jam or tarts. Wearing green gardening gloves game of putting small green things into a small green container whilst wearing the gloves. Learning about geese – the goose and the gander on a local farm or smallholding. Learning about goats on a visit to a local farm or breeder. Find or constructing a bridge or something simple to represent a bridge outside, then share the story telling of ‘The Three Billy goats Gruff’ and improvise acting out the story on the bridge.
h. Holly is hard to hold. Who hovers around the honey suckle? Hedgehogs hibernate. Honey comes from the Hives.
i. Investigating insects in the ivy. Ice investigations and experients.
j. Playing the game ‘Just jumping for joy’. This is an action game where the children act the different animals presented by a child who is chosen to call. A different child can call for each round so that many get a turn and they all need to remember what animals have already been chosen so that the game involves a good selection or variety of anials. E.g. – grasshoppers, lamb’s, children, goats, frogs, rabbits and when the caller says jumping jellyfish the children jump as high as they can and then lay as flat and still as they can on the floor until the next animal to act has been called. Personal observation of the jumping movements of different animals is recommended so the children can gain a wider experience of movement styles, speeds and corresponding balance.
k. Kite flying and kite making. Kittens in the kitchen kettle as a play activity using homemade kittens or small soft toys. Missing kitten memory game using the previous collection of kittens or a collection of kitten pictures resourced from a book or old kitten calendar. Kittens in the kitchen story. Book
l. Lovely little lambs look so lovable.( visit some lambs and help feed the orphan lambs – which might be able to be brought in to the children at school. Looking at little legs (insects and magnifying glasses). Walking on large leaves. Walking around a lake.
m. Moths, mountains, magnifying glasses, making mountains out of molehills find a local field which has mole hills, follow the mole hills and make a mountain out of the soil. This can help the landowner for mole hills are make the field work more difficult for the machinery. Making mud is messy as an indoor play activity or better still outside as a mud-pit play activity area.
n. No-one knows what newts do best.
o. Only Owls can open one eye on its own.
p. Pink playful piglets. Pretty pansies. Playing in Prickly bushes is painful. Puppies play with people, especially playful people (children)!
q. The little Quails move quickly and lay quite tiny eggs. The quick questions game.
r. ‘Rabbit’s runaway, rush to your Burrows’ game. When the fox turns around the rabbits hid under a blanket. If the fox can still see a bit of a rabbit He touches that part of the rabbit that has not been covered and that person then becomes the fox or the fox can just choose to catch the last rabbit to reach his blanket burrow to be the next fox.
s. Sitting so still the songbirds keep singing. (Out-door activity) Stinging nettles sometimes sting your skin. Plant some stinging nettles in pots and put them indoors as an option for exploration. Discover when stinging nettles do and do not sting. Aloe Vera gel will sooth away unwanted/uncomfortable stings! Shadows on the sundial. Sprouting seeds. Watching snowdrops flowering inside in pots and outside in the garden/ hedgerows. Spotting Spider’s webs. Sieving activities: sifting gravel into sand and different sizes of stone. Scatty squirrels spring/sprint about searching for their supper. Poo sticks speeding down the stream. Strawberry picking. Slugs and snails leave slippery slimy trails . Sheep sometimes sleep in the snow. Visiting the Swans – Swans swim so smoothly, sometimes they stay still in one spot, the signets swim strongly and snatch at the small pieces of food. The children build straw structures to sit on or sleep in. Then play the Simple Simon (or any other S name e.g. Susan, Sally, Steven etc suitable to the child’s gender) Simple S….. Says game. Caller chooses S activities such as singing on the straw, snoring, sitting, sleeping. Spotting Swallows and Swifts.
t. Tortoises and terrapins, tadpoles and toads, tall trees. Tall trees song.
u. Up under the roof the bats sleep upside down. The look up and under game played outside. The children take turns to say either up or under and the other children then find a way to Obey. The children may be asked to explain where they are e.g. Tommy are you up or under? “ I am under this big oak tree, under the gate etc…. I am up on the mole hill,
v. Walking through the valley. The velvet violets. Vegetables grow very well in our vegetable plot. Vegetables growing in vegetable gardens, visiting vegetable gardens.
w. Making wind chimes, Wonderful whispering waterfalls. Watching wiggling Worms.Making a wormary Watching Worms in the Wormary. . Watching wagtails (which can often be found close to a waterfall), getting wet beside/under the water fall . . Wading through the water to wash our wellingtons. Washing our wellington with water when we are welcomed home. Making wind weather veins and windmills. Make a large compass, using an old shower tray and a metal Knitting needle pushed through a piece of cork to make it float and turn into the north – south alignment. Use signs on sticks pushed into the ground to identify the different compass directions. Game: Hide some W objects in the surrounding environment at various distances measured in strides and identified by auditory/written clues. Use the compass directions north, south, east, west, as the main clue supported by other environmental clues. E.g. such as go North until you reach the sandpit then look under a big stone. Weeping willows by the waterside. Go into the woods to collect willow then weave it into a trellis or planting a live growing willow den or a willow tunnel with a living inter-woven roof plant them to form a growing willow play structure. Make an ornamental spiders web using willow for the diagonal lines and white wool for the spiral encircling the main structure as a continuous thread.
x. Going to visit or building your own obstacle course that provides plenty of Exercise and Extra exciting experiences to explore. Making an auditory recording during the event. at a later date listen to some of this recording, then ask the children to verbal answer questions related to ‘Exercise and Extra exciting experiences’. Add these comments to any subsequent documentation on the event.
y. Finding yellow colours in a natural environment, and create pictures of different shades of yellow in nature.
Go to see the milking at a local farm of smallholding and then use the milk to make yoghurt using a large thick earthen pot in a well insulated hay box.
z. Finding Zigzag patterns in the natural environment. Finding/choosing objects from the natural environment to use in the classroom for printing zigzag patterns.
When does a horse have stripes? When it is a zebra of course!
Why did the zebra cross the road? Because it was a zebra crossing!
 
The games are designed to:-
Relate the refinement of perceptual skills with a successful activity.
Singing songs and rhyming words, relate to auditory perceptual skills and auditory integration.