Last week, we decided to learn a bit about birds.

We wanted to know what types of birds there are in Scotland.

We looked at the RSPB website and learned about what birds we would be likely to see in our gardens. The site gave us information about the birds’ diet, where they nest and what they sound like.

As a class, we decided that it would be a good idea to feed the birds that live around the school area. As we had learned that some birds eat worms, nuts, seeds and insects, we thought it would be a good idea to have some of these foods in our feeders.

We had the choice of making a feeder from garden wire, cheerios and blueberries or one using toast, peanut butter and bird seed. Both feeders were fun to make. We even pretended that we were birds and had a taste of some of the ingredients.

Unfortunately, we forgot to invite Santa along when we were making our feeders, so the next morning, before going out to hang them up around the school, we told Santa all about our feeders. Miss Yarrow  was really impressed at all the bird facts and information we had remembered.

Finally, we got to go outside and hang up our feeders. It was up to us where to hang them. We tried to spread them out around the school and put them in places that the birds could get to. Two nosy crows watched us as we hung them up (we were sure that they were going to eat them as soon as we left!).

As we walked around, we pretended to be bird watchers. We spotted a few Blackbirds and some Seagulls. We could hear the songs  of some smaller birds too, but we couldn’t see them.

We hope the birds have enjoyed our eating from our feeders.

Santa came outdoors with us, to see what life we could find up the trees outside our classroom. We have learned that mini-beasts have different habitats, so we figured that some must live in trees.

We took out some big white sheets and some metre sticks. We put the sheets under the trees and gave the branches a whack. As we did this, we watched the sheets, to see what living things had landed on them.

We observed that different trees were home to different mini-beasts. We had a big discussion about whether this was because of the type of tree, the size of tree, the type of leaves it had, or where it was growing (in the sun or in the shade). We found a cool caterpillar on one tree and a big spider on another tree. All the trees had little flies and different beetles and insects.

After finding out that there are lots of different mini-beasts that need different habitats, we decided to build our own habitat. We went off into the woods to gather some sticks, grass and stones. Santa enjoyed his time in the woods helping us gather resources. We made sure that there were no mini-beasts on the sticks that we picked up as we know its important not to remove them from the environment that they are used. to (otherwise they might not survive).  Once we had gathered what we needed, we collected some pallets and took them to an area of left-over turf. We decided that it was a good idea to re-use turf that had been dug up by another class, rather than buying new stuff. Mrs Sherry and Miss Yarrow helped us build the hotel and we added all our sticks, stones and grass etc. When we were building, we found worms, beetles, slugs, woodlice and….a FROG, in amongst the turf. We were all really excited that Santa got to see all that Scottish wildlife.

(Santa keeping an eye on us…making sure we were working hard).

Miss Yarrow is going to bring in some more turf that we can re-use as a roof for our hotel. We feel like we have done a really good job in contributing to the environment with our mini-beast hotel. Now all that is left to do is to make some signs to let people know about it, and encourage them not to touch it so that the wild-life can start moving in.