Norton Infant School

Last week EYFS were very lucky to have a visit from our expert visitor, Biscuit. Supporting our second case study “Who cares for us?”

Biscuit is the local Therapy Dog at our community link and feeder secondary school, Campsmount. Biscuit and his handlers, Mrs Kearsley and Mrs Young, came into school to talk to the children about how Biscuit helps and cares for children at their school. The dog is a calming and reassurance resource for children struggling with anxiety, poor attendance and illness.

Biscuit listens to the children read and provides emotional support to both children and staff in school. His presence and the ability for the children to interact and stroke him during their days provides happiness, calmness and reassurance across the school.

The EYFS children were so amazed to see and hear about Biscuit’s job and were so pleased to have shared loves, cuddles and strokes of their own. Seeing how animals help care for us humans, helped the children to understand that it is not just us that care for others, but that animals can too care for us. What a wonderful support and addition to our expedition Biscuit was. Each class had some special time with Biscuit before he returned to Campsmount.

The week commencing the 5th October 2026, Nursery were given the exciting opportunity to look after three “Owl Babies” which arrived via our Kindness Elves in their bird box. They came with a note asking us to take special care of them. Nursery were thrilled to have the creatures indoors. With all of our new knowledge that the children have been learning in their first case study of our expedition, about what caring looks like they felt confident in caring for the Owlets. So, as we began our second Case Study, Who cares for us?This seemed like the perfect time to practise all of our learning.

Our first job was to figure out how we would care for the birds like their mummy owl would?

Nursery soon realised that the owlets would need feeding. Some ideas of what they could be fed included; “Owl Ice-cream”, “Leaves”, “Sticks”, “Mice” and “Insects”. We settled on worms and as part of our Maths learning decided that we would feed and count out one worm for each bird. Introducing the children to subitising to one (Saying what you can see, without counting). This was modelled to the children first by counting the total number of owls, counting one worm for each owl and then questioning how many worms would we need all together to feed the birds? The children then independently in provision practised feeding the owls one worm each.

The rest of the week the children explored other ways in which our Mummy’s care for us and the Mummy Owl cares for the Owlets. To help the children understand who the Owls primary carer is, we created Mummy Owl treats, using pancakes, apples, chocolate buttons and jelly beans for the features. The children subitised from a model how many of each feature the owl had, quickly recognising one and mostly two (some with support).

We also created owl faces using leaves outdoors in our outdoor learning, mark making features and using stick on pieces also.

In our creative area indoors the children used transient art to create the habitat of the Owlets, thinking about the home which their Mummy Owl has made for them. We used natural resources to do this and added our own printed Owl Babies.

In provision the children also used their fine motor and art skills to fork print the feathers on to all kinds of owl templates at the painting easel. The effect was quite beautiful and the children were persevering parrots as the task took quite a lot of concentration and patience.