We have packed up our hedgehogs, added some hedgehog food and then covered them with leaves for camouflage. Then holes were added to the top of the box to allow all of the sleeping hedgehogs to breathe!

They will be put in a safe place to hibernate over the very cold Winter months.

We will need to remember to wake them up about March!

Can you remember why hedgehogs hibernate in Winter?

We investigated how hedgehogs make tunnels and burrow in the sand in our classroom. We used pipes and tubes and built up wet sand around them. Then we created a hedgehog house out of sand too. Many of us were not very happy about playing with wet sand at first but, once we tried it and found that it was great for tunnelling and building we decided we really liked playing with wet sand.

We went on a nature hunt around our school grounds to collect leaves and twigs. Then we created a nature area in our classroom  where we play and have fun investigating. Mrs Hope also did an Art lesson with us where we used dried  leaves and twigs to create hedgehog pictures. This was really interesting and our display of work has been much admired.

• Hedgehogs have 36 teeth.
• They are born with their prickles under their skin and the prickles grow when the hedgehog is about 3 days old.
• They live in countries other than Scotland. Thistle the hedgehog is an African Pygmy hedgehog.
• They live in hedgehog houses made by humans, in leaves, under hedges and sometimes in hollows in trees.
• They go to sleep in the Winter until about March. This is called hibernation and they do this because the foods they eat like slugs, snails and  bugs often die off in the Winter-  so they would not have enough food to eat if they did not hibernate.
• They have four legs and they are very long. Hedgehogs are fast runners!
• Foxes, badgers and dogs are predators for hedgehogs.
• Hedgehogs face many dangers and they have to be helped by humans to survive.When they are frightened they curl up into a ball but, their prickles also warn predators away.

The only question we still have to research is – “Do hedgehogs live in colonies or not ?”

Well done, P2/1 it was fun finding out the answers to these questions as we worked on our hedgehog topic.

Our new topic this term is Night and Day.

We came up with the following questions we would like to find the answers to:

Why does the moon only spin around the earth?

Why does the earth spin around?

Why does the sun only spin around the earth?

Why is the world a circle when the world is flat on it?

Why is the world like a line when it is a circle from space?

Why does the earth have gravity?

I want to know about all the animals that come out at night.

Why does the sun come up and the moon goes to sleep?

Why does the earth have air in it?

Our new topic is Night and Day.

How can we learn more about night and day in and around our classroom ?

• Tell a grown up you have found an injured hedgehog.
• Put on gloves to protect your hands from its prickly spines.
• Wrap it up gently in a towel or scarf to keep it warm.
• Put the hedgehog in a box to keep it safe. ( If you add a lid always make lots of holes in the lid so that it can breathe).
• Get a grown up to telephone the vet.
• Take the injured hedgehog to the vet and ask for help.

We worked together to make floats, boats and rafts to keep our toy hedgehogs dry . We had to test out many different materials and found that some were more successful than others. When we added the second hedgehog we also found out that our designs capsized so, we had to then rethink our  designs.