Thursday 24 November 2011

Critter Tubes

This week, WOW! Club headed down into our field and woodland area, before it got too dark. We are very lucky as we have a large school field, a mature hedgerow running along one side and a lovely small wooded area at the far end. A path runs through it and we have an outside classroom in a clearing, with log seats... it's super!







Our task was to collect a selection of autumn materials to fill a cardboard tube as we were going to make a little home for bugs to hide away in.

We collected leaves, moss, twigs, bits of bark... in fact, all sorts of bits and pieces. We each had our own little bag.




When we got back into school, we laid out a piece of newspaper on the table and tipped out everything we had collected. We each had a big piece of cardboard tube. We used the materials and some straws to create a home for bugs to overwinter. We learnt that we would need to create lots of small nooks and crannies for the bugs to crawl into and hide away, safe from predators.



We spent a while carefully filling our tubes...











and were pretty pleased with the results.. in fact a ladybird decided to move in straight away!!












We places all of our tubes together in a big plastic container and packed some of the spaces with the bits we had left. We are going to stand it up on its edge, so the rain can't get in and place it in the wildlife area.




We finished off the session playing on the iPad2...Ms MacRae had uploaded a new wildlife app called 'Survival' by Arkive. The Arkive website is really good and the app is all about wild animals. In some questions you had to say whether the creatures was a bird, mammal, or fish... others you had to order them according to height or weight.












We all took it in turns to have a go and we loved it!

Before we knew it, it was half past four and time to go home. Another great week at Wildlife Club.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

WOW! Robin Wild Art

The WOW! Club have been very productive today. Ms MacRae had seen a competition organised by The Woodland Trust, where you had to design and make some art out in the environment. It was the perfect activity for WOW Club, so we set to work straight away as we do not have long after school before it starts getting dark!

As we are heading toward Christmas, we decided to create a robin. We drew it out in chalk on the paving slabs and looked carefully at a picture to see all the different colours we would need.



We then set to work... racing here, there and everywhere all around the school grounds, we searched for leaves and materials that were the colours we needed for our robin: browns (different shades), reds (lots of bright ones!) some pale ones for the underneath (these were the hardest to find) and then something for the eyes and the legs.






Some of the club found some berries... shiny and black... just what we needed for the eyes. Hawthorn berries added a lovely bright hue to the breast too.
















We used all the materials to cover the robin template, carefully choosing the correct shades that we needed. It took us about half an hour to completely fill the robin and to build his legs out of some twigs.



We were all really pleased and proud of what we had produced.... and just a little sad that once the wind blew, our wonderful art work would end up back all over the garden!

We took lots of photos of it and we hope it will be there in the morning for the other pupils to see too!




We are going to enter it for The Woodland Trust ARTventure competition and we really hope that we win a prize!

We hope you like our robin. Ms MacRae is thinking that is is so good, that this might be the first of many wildlife inspired pieces of art... but the next one will be something a little more permanent... one which won't just blow away in the wind!