Grasshoppers Day Nursery, St. Albans

Summer activities at Grasshoppers are often themed around holidays and seaside visits, which provide endless opportunity to discuss the fragility of marine habitats.
Staff at Grasshoppers decided to design an experiment to demonstrate to their young eco-warriors how damaging litter is to our oceans.
Using water play trays, to create a marine environment for sea life toys, staff then began adding different materials like plastic bottles and banana skins! The young children were able to see how difficult these new items made it for their marine toys to move around, leading to rich discussion on whether they would enjoy swimming in other people's rubbish and whether marine animals would understand that litter was not food to be eaten.
Now, young children at Grasshoppers clearly understand that we have a responsibility to respect and protect marine life and this simple introduction to science developed communication and language skills as well as an understanding of the world!