The Wilderness War
Read The Wilderness War – Introduction if you do not know or have a copy of the book.
Numeracy and Mathematics
Estimating and Counting in Your Outdoor Space
How Many Snails ?
CfE Es and Os MNU 2 – 02a
Calculate the approximate number of snails in your garden or local green space. It would be impossible to actually find and count every snail in your space. Scientists sometimes need to know to get an idea of how many creatures or plants are living in a particular area. The Wildlife Watch instruction sheet will help you calculate the approximate number of snails in your space by showing you how to count a sample of the snails and use that information to work out the total number approximately.
Wildlife Watch Mark and Recapture Garden Snails
Why would it be useful to know how many snails there are?
Did you know snails leave a broken line of slime in their trails while slugs leave a continuous line of slime?
Leaves on a Tree
CfE Es and Os MNU 1 – 01a, 2-01a
Is it possible to count the total number of leaves on a tree? The activity sheet from the Royal Horticultural Society School Gardening pages will take you through the seemingly impossible task of finding out how many leaves there are on a tree.
The methods you will learn are used by scientists studying groups of objects in a large space (people at a football stadium, a colony of birds on a cliff face, the number of daises in a field…)
You will be counting in 10s, 20s, 50s and discovering techniques to arrive at a reasonable estimate when working with large numbers. You can go on to take up the challenge of working out the area covered by a leaf and the weight of leaves on a single tree.
