Junior and Senior Infants took advantage of the lovely sunshine for their first nature walk of the year. As we are learning all about autumn, we were looking for signs of autumn outside. We discovered some brown, red and even yellow leaves. We collected lots of leaves to bring back to our classroom.

On our walk, we stopped at a hawthorn tree which had no leaves left. The hawthorn is a very thorny tree and sometimes it has berries. We spotted some red berries left on this tree. These berries are called haws. We didn’t pick any as we knew the birds would need these berries for food.

Next we came to a crab apple tree. Lots of little apples had fallen to the ground. Teacher explained to the boys and girls that these apples are not the same as the ones we have in our lunch boxes. We can’t eat these tiny apples right off the tree. These apples are special and an adult has to cook the apples to turn them into jam or jelly. We collected lots of tiny apples for our classroom.

Finally we arrived at the oak tree. We are learning all about the acorn at the moment. We found some baby acorns growing on this tree. It takes 100 years for an oak tree to reach maturity. All of the boys and girls agreed that they would like to come back and see how big this tree is when they are 100 years old!! They predict that the tree will be taller than the school by then!

One of our beady eyed students spotted a swarm of hairy caterpillars on the leaves. We took a quick photograph so that we could look at them closer in class.

What a great nature walk. We can’t wait for our next one!

All set and ready for our nature walk

We found some leaves!

Hairy hairy caterpillars!!

Baby acorns

Sunny sunny smiles