Hello little fantail! Natural learning prompted by nature…

This gorgeous fantail found its way through my kitchen door, up the stairs and into my daughter’s bedroom. She loves nature and was enchanted by our little visitor. We often have birds coming into our home, living surrounded by trees and native bush, but they usually stay in the living room and don’t venture as far as this little cheeky fella!

A fantail visiting Alice's room!

A fantail visiting Alice’s room!

I absolutely adore fantails, they are one of my favourite New Zealand birds, simply because of the way they follow people on bush walks (they are friendly and very tame, but follow purely for food – humans kick up the earth as they walk and disturb insects – providing food for the fantails).

Anyway, this little visitor, who quietly found his way out (without a fuss, panic, poop or feather dropped) absolutely enchanted my eight year old.

She said she wanted to write a poem, so I suggested we set a 10 minute timer and both write down our feelings in silence, without worrying about spelling or grammar (as all good writers edit and reedit, before publishing their final work). The timer went off after ten minutes and she kept writing. After around fifteen minutes she said she was ready to share. Her words blew me away (I was also quietly impressed with her spelling and use of speech marks, never mind that the lack of spacing between words made them challenging to read – her actual hand writing was legible and is definitely improving over time – hurray!). We then spent about an hour working further on our work and Alice drew a picture of a fantail too.

Here’s her finished poem (click on it to enlarge), enjoy! x

Alice's poem about our visiting fantail.

Alice’s poem about our visiting fantail.

 And my musings too…

Musings on the visiting fantail

Musings on the visiting fantail