Tag Archives: habitats

Investigating outdoors.

ASD1 have been exploring a variety of Habitats on weekly outings in the community, some close at hand, and others further away. We starting looking at the plants and wildlife that we could find in our own school grounds – there are micro-habitats there, with lots of mini beasts to find.

We then travelled to Eliburn Park to see what we could find in the reservoir there. We tried dipping our nets into the pond but only found some flukes (small worms) and the larva of a dragonfly. We spotted some ducklings and lots of wild plants too.

Our next outing on the bus was to look at woodland wildlife at Beecraigs Country Park. We heard lots of birds but didn’t spot any although we did encounter a very hairy caterpillar on our way back. We did gather a few treasures to examine further at school.

Easter Inch Moss was a very rich habitat and we have explored plant/ tree life and pond life there – and we even went off track into the wilderness, spotting a buzzard soaring in the sky.

There was even evidence of plant and animal life in Whitehill Industrial Estate.

When we get back to school we use books to look up what we have found and then write this up into our Nature Journals. It is fun being explorers!

Learning Outdoors

ASD1 are looking at a variety of Scottish Habitats this term and this will mean lots of Outdoor Learning.
We started by exploring our school grounds to find out what wild plant life and animal life we could spot there and what evidence we could gather.
We spotted things we expected to see, like the jackdaws that we regularly feed, but we also spotted an oystercatcher in the playground.

We also looked for mini-beasts in our sensory garden, lifting logs and plant pots to see what we could find and photographing them. Do you know what these are?

We brought these things back into our classroom to look at in more detail and to start an entry in our Nature Journals.

On Wednesday 3rd May we focused on the different types of mini-beasts that we could find. We searched on plants, in the soil, under bark, logs and leaves and various plant pots, as well as the container and eaves of the outdoor classroom. This time we collected various mini-beasts in bug spotters and recorded them on our spotting sheet.

We then carried our discoveries into the outdoor classroom where we finished recording our data, before we looked at each mini-beast up close using the bug spotters. The two creepiest were definitely the leatherjacket and the big spider! However we all liked the little ladybird.

It was such a lovely day it was nice just to relax in the outdoor classroom after we had let all our creatures back into their habitat.