eco – Banton Biggies

Biodiversity Live Lesson

Last week we joined in this video conference. It was in 3 sections all based on wether.
First we heard from Jess Lilley, Edinburgh Zoo about life in the water. We saw the penguins at the zoo and found out about a fish none of us knew about, the flapper skate.

We then heard the story of the Mermaid of the Clyde, told by Allison Galbraith. The last workshop was by Joe Wilkin-Oxley from Keep Scotland Beautiful. He explainsd about water, how much we use and how to save it.

This was all very interesting. During the week most of the primary sevens were off to Kilsyth Academy, but the rest of the Biggies got busy writing stories about mythical water creatures and working on scale in maths using the Flapper Skate to practise scaling down & up.

eco focus day

We had an eco focus day last week.

In preparation we did some litter picking on Thursday:

A small load of rubbish

On Friday we started thinking about What A Wonderful World we live in (cue song).

We joined in with the #showthelove tag organised by The Climate Coalition, and decorated some Green Hearts.

The then looked at the Lyrics of What a Wonderful World and used them to write some poems, here are a few:

Earth awaking
To wake up in the morning to see the sun awaking,
To see the grass left with a white covered layer,
To see the tree swaying with the tiniest of breeze,
To see the deer grazing at peace,
To hear the birds chirping happy to be alive,
To feel the earth awakening ready to thrive,
To not know what’s coming next in you life,
To see each animal all worked up inside,
Our earth has things we can’t believe but sometimes it’s the simplest thing that puts us at ease.

By Alice

Wonderful world
Small world, big world,
Rolling around the sun world.
Cold world, hot world,
Full of mud world!

Animal world, dry world,
Weather world, colourful world,
Massive sized world.

Plant world, water world,
Full of food world,
Gravity world, noises world.
Full of wildlife world,
We’re killing our home world.

Rhuaridh A

Wonderful world
Big and small,
Tall and short,
Beautiful and ugly I love it all.

Sea and land,
Fish and animals,
I know all like the back of my hand.

Hazel

We then though about more practice things, how deal with rubbish in School and at home. Where our water comes from and how to stop it all being wasted.

Finally we made some green seed bomb hearts to share some flowers!

A small load of rubbish

On Thursday, the day before our eco focus day we headed down to the MUGA and park to pick up litter. It looks like or hard work earlier had paid off. We found much less litter.

Biggies Litter Pick

As part of our eco schools program the whole school was out and about picking up litter. The biggies were tasked with covering the surrounds of the school and the play park.

Despite the weather we got wrapped up, put on hi vis vests and protective gloves and go busy.

After we got back to class we estimated our weights and weighed our rubbish.

All natural insect sculptures: Banton Beasties

We were inspired by A garden alive with art: all-natural insect sculptures to make our own bugs:

Autumn Poems

The Biggies took advantage of the good weather to take some photos in the playground this morning. We then wrote poems to go with them.

Playground trees

This morning we were finding out about the trees in our playground.

We measured the height of trees with our clinometers.
We measured the circumferences of the trees and used a webpage to estimate how old the trees were.
We took photos of the trees, their leaves, bark and fruit.

Skills: maths skills: measuring, calculation to find out the heights. Team work. Taking pictures. Web browsing.

Walk to Dows woods

Yesterday we were at Dow’s woods. Mr and Mrs Carter came in so we could go down to look at insects.

He told us what three ways a seed can spread. The first way is when the wind carry’s it away like the rose berry willow herb. The second way is an animal a squirrel can eat a seed and poop it out or burry and forget about it. The last way it pops like the gorse bush. In the spring they have yellow flowers and they smell like coconuts, they have black seeds pods that pop open and spread the seeds.

One thing that I really liked was when I saw a caterpillar not just any caterpillar a fuzzy one that looked like it had two eyes on its side but it did not. I found it on a leaf and I scooped it into my tub I did not name it, I released it when we were going to go back to school.

The second thing I found interesting was when we caught a lot of baby toads and we caught a frog at one point, I got to hold one of the baby toads remember to wet your hands first! I let it go and hop it went into the grass!

I really liked looking at all the bug like the spiders, butterflies and the ladybugs. I also really loved seeing the trees my favourite tree we saw was the beech because I like the way the seeds looked.

In conclusion I really liked Dows woods because I like looking at the bugs and nature. I love getting closeups of the insects I think they are interesting. We saw hundreds of mushrooms my favourite one was the Fly Agaric toadstool.

Mayfly larva

Mayfly Larva

We live day and night,

Holding on to rocks so tight.

We camouflage to stay alive,

Making sure that we thrive.

We have no – melody.

We just look – deadly.

We eat algae stones and weeds,

Because they are our own needs.

Everybody makes a fuss,

Because they hate us us us.

Burn adventure

Today the biggies went on an adventure to a burn in Banton. The burn was at our teacher assistants garden which was massive. As soon as we got there we took of our shoes or trainers and put on wellies because it was very went and slippery even though the sun was out and everyone nearly died in the heat of the sun.

After that we went into the very shallow burn where we thought there would be nothing so the we picked up our nets and went into the burn in our groups. In our groups we had lots of fun and found lots of disturbing, disgusting also weird creatures and bugs. At the end we regrouped and headed over to a brick wall where we put down a container that was filled with water and creatures where half of the stuff we never even knew what they were. We looked at everyone’s containers to see what bugs and creatures we all found in our groups and the most disturbing creatures that we found was in Emily’s and Aaliyah’s tub. Heather heard some grasshoppers and there was loads but we could only hear them not see them. After a bit of an adventure in the grass looking for them heather finally fought one and we got a container and put it in there gently and put a lid on it so we could see then after 10minutes she released it back into the wild.

Mrs. Gray the teacher’s assistant bought lots of food and drink she bought diluted juice for us and crisps and lollies that were tiny and still took us a long, long time to finish. Then she gave us even more sweeties and it was soooooo generous of her.

When we had all cooled down and finished we went back out to play in the boiling hot sun and we took out different equipment, there was a parachute and a rugby ball also a tiny ball for hand ball that everybody loved and didn’t use for hand ball. After quite a lot of chaos we packed up and nearly left but then there were Mrs. Gray’s dogs that were the cutest and most of us couldn’t resist patting them and wanting to take them home there was a pug called Freddy and two westies that were so cuddly and fluffy after a lot of persuading we left and we were about to die of heat and soreness on the way back eventually we made it!!!

By Emily and Emma 🤩🌺🦄🦗