Child First Nursery and Pre-school is home to seven ducks, and our children are eagerly awaiting the arrival of seven more.
We incubated the first seven duck eggs in May last year, as part of a programme of changes that I introduced to give the children greater access to the natural world.
The philosophy at Child First is that children learn through choice, involvement and meaningful experiences. So, as well as hatching the duck eggs, we have created a fruit and vegetable garden.
Last year the children planted seeds and regularly weeded and watered the beds as well as picking and preparing the produce for lunch. In the summer we often ate our lunch outside with our chef and the children sometimes cooked lunch on the fire pit.
Another way we've introduced children to the natural world is by having animals visit the nursery. Last year, snakes, lizards, tarantulas, a hedgehog and a chinchilla all came to the nursery to give children the chance to see them close up and learn how to handle them.
INDIAN RUNNERS
Our ducks are Indian Runners - quite fast as their name suggests, and quite big, as they stand upright, like penguins. When they hatched, we decided we couldn't bear to get rid of them, so kept them all. Then, once the ducks were bigger, the children helped to organise an open day to raise funds for a safe, child-friendly and duck-friendly duck house.
Over the past nine months, the ducks have become part of the nursery 'furniture'. They all have names chosen by the children: Daisy, Tallula, Ditty, Lulu, Quackers, Yellow and Jemima. Each of our age groups chose a name. Two were named at the open day in a 'name the duck competition'. The yellow duckling has now turned into a very handsome black drake but he's still called Yellow!
The ducks spend their time between their own enclosure and the rest of the nursery garden, which also has a little pond. The children can often be seen wandering down to the bottom of the garden to be with the ducks, topping up their water, bringing out their feed (vegetable leftovers and bird pellets), cleaning out their house and putting in fresh straw and, of course, talking to them. And the ducks talk back ...
Four-year-old Ned speaks for many of the children when he says, 'We love our ducks. We watched them come out of their shells and grow big.'
The staff are equally fond of the ducks and take turns to come to the nursery at weekends to let them out and feed them and put them safely in the duck house at night - we can't leave them out at night because of foxes.
Having the ducks has brought many benefits. They widen the children's understanding of the natural world and give them the responsibility for looking after living creatures and sustaining their environment, not to mention the daily numeracy and literacy opportunities for counting, measuring and communication.
We were all so excited to discover the first two eggs in the duck house one morning. There are now nine. Like last year, we've placed the eggs in an incubator and the children are helping to turn them three times a day. It takes about 28 days for the eggs to hatch, so another few weeks and we should have our little ducklings. We can't wait!
As told to Ruth Thomson. Andrea Leonard is manager of Child First Nursery and Pre-school in Bicester, Oxfordshire, one of five nurseries in the Child First chain (www.childfirst.co.uk)
