Outdoor Learning

During Outdoor Learning last week, we finally managed to go pond dipping!  Conrad took groups of five or six children to the pond, and each group filled several buckets of water, which they took back to the playground to examine more closely.  We found lots of interesting and different types of minibeasts in the pond water.

Thank you, Conrad, for helping us out!

Outdoor Learning

During last Thursday's Outdoor Learning, we visited the maze to investigate the types of minibeasts living there.

We used magnifying glasses and 'bug pots' to examine the minibeasts in more detail.

Once a cabbage butterfly landed on one of our hands and gave us a really good view!

 We even saw a dragonfly resting on the leaf of a plant near our pond.

Minibeast display

Our completed 'Minibeast Garden' display!  You are welcome to pop into the classroom to see it properly.

K'nex Spider Trap Challenge

A rare spider has escaped from the zoo.  Our challenge was to use K'nex to build a trap, which could catch the spider and return it to the zoo, without hurting it.  We had to work in groups of three or four, and we had one hour to complete the challenge.
These are our completed traps.  Aren't they amazing?

Outdoor Learning

Last Thursday we carried out another minibeast hunt around the school grounds.  Last time we did this, it was a very wet day.  This time the sun was shining and it was very warm.  We wanted to compare how many minibeasts, and what types of minibeasts, we could find, compared to last time. 
We looked for minibeasts ...

... in the boat ...

... under the dolphin bin ...

... in the grass ...

... and even under the mushrooms!

We took magnifying glasses and bug collecting pots with us to examine what we found more closely, but we remembered that we had to handle any minibeasts very gently and return them to where we found them.

We found a spider's eggs below a stone.

Look at this!

Wow! That's amazing!

Painted Lady butterflies

Last week we were able to release our very own butterflies into the wild!  We have watched them grow from tiny caterpillars into much larger ones, then turn into chrysalises and finally change into beautiful Painted Lady butterflies.  Two of our class went down to Victoria's Garden to let them go amongst the flowers there.

the empty chrysalises

a butterfly just appeared in our 'insect garden'

releasing the butterflies

a beautiful Painted Lady butterfly

designing our own butterflies

K'nex Butterfly Challenge

Our challenge was to work in groups to create a butterfly out of K'nex. 
















The butterfly had to have three body parts (a head, a thorax and an abdomen), two antennae, a pair of wings which could move - and it had to be completed in an hour!
How do you think we did?