Clay Hedgehogs and Mark Making with Autumnal Finds

This week the toddlers enjoyed exploring found autumnal objects and using them with clay for making a hedgehog and experimenting with mark making. We had sweet chestnuts, acorns, sycamore seeds, beech nuts, ash keys, pinecones, twigs and leaves. We only looked at the sweet chestnut cases to see where the chestnuts come from as they are a too prickly to touch.

For our first activity we warmed our hands up rolling, patting and pinching the terracotta clay before making an egg shape out of it which we pushed twigs into. Once we finished doing this we used the acorn hats and sycamore seeds to make eyes and a nose. One of the toddlers made her hedgehog feet out of the sycamore seeds.
During the next part of the session we had lots of fun exploring mark making with the white clay. We had the autumnal objects and two bracelet with stone beads. The children realised they could use the acorn hats to cut circles out of the clay and had lots of fun with this. They also enjoyed printing with the leaves, cones and bracelets.
During the last fifteen minutes the children chose a shape to cut out of the clay and make into a hanging decoration. They then chose their favourite mark making objects to decorate their shapes.

Next week we will start our Halloween theme creating some monsters.