Tuesday 20 March 2012

Busy, Busy Busy!!!

Ms MacRae was unable to run WOW! Club last week as she was down in Windsor at my meeting with Bushnell... but she had managed to bring a few pressies back to us... 4 Bushnell caps, which we were all keen to wear! Ms MacRae had bought in one of her Bushnell Trail cameras for us to set up.  We all looked at the  Bushnell and learnt about how it works. It is a remote camera that runs on batteries. It can be set up anywhere and when an animal comes past the animal's movement and body heat triggers the camera to take a photo or a video. We thought about what creatures it might capture on the SD card and where we would like to put it. We decided that we would take it down to the very corner of our school field... there is a little fence and what could be a bit of a track.

First, everyone wanted their photo taken in the cool caps... we are going to call ourselves 'The WOW! Bushnell Bunch'!!!!





We set off on our first Bushnell Bunch Mission..... to the far end of the field! We threaded to strap through the back of the camera and decided which tree to mount it on so it faced the area that we thought some creatures might use. We then used a laptop cable to secure it to the tree to make sure no one stole it. We set the Bushnell to do a 30 second video every time it triggered and we are going to leave it until Friday. We will look at the footage next WOW! Club.... how exciting!









On the way back into school, we started collecting some nesting materials. The blue tits have been in and out of our school nest box and you can watch it live on the school website at www.waterortonprimary.co.uk. They have started bringing in some moss.

We looked all along the field and the hedge for feathers, dried grass and moss. We discovered that the moss grew well in the areas where the grass had been killed to make the football pitch lines.









We use 4 old fat ball and fat bar feeders and filled them with all the materials we had collected....we hope that our blue tits will be grateful for all of our collecting and we will be watching to see if they start collecting materials from our dispensers.  Ms MacRae makes nesting dispensers in her garden too.... you can see them all on her website HERE Try making your own at home!!!











We hung them up in the school garden.




Finally, we just had time to plant our potatoes for the 'Grow Your Own Potatoes' Competition! Our potatoes had started to chit and we half filled the bags with compost. Then we placed the potatoes inside with the sprouts facing upwards. We then covered them in soil and watered them well. When the leaves reach the top of the bag, we have to fill the rest of the bag with soil.










It was home time!! What a busy week! Don't forget to keep watching the blue tits in our nest box as they begin to build their nest!

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Is Spring nearly here???

WOW! Club headed out into the school grounds this week, armed with my digital camera... we were looking for signs that spring was on its way and I wanted them to see if they could take a photo as evidence. We will do the same in a couple of weeks and see how everything has moved on. We took it in turns to use the camera.

We started off in our Wildlife area where our pond is.... the crocuses are flowering and the daffodils are just in bud....




We looked in the pond, but were disappointed that there were no frogs or frogspawn to be seen...


We did see a male pheasant in the field next to our Wildlife Area though....



We then headed out to the field and took pictures of lots of signs that the plant life is bursting forth... it won't be long before the bare branches are covered in fresh new growth... there was lots to see...













We turned over some logs in the outdoor classroom and found a worm and a centipede....



and found a bumble bee taking advantage of the first nectar....


We returned inside to see how our potatoes were doing... we had set them to chit. We can already see some tiny sprouts and we will be planting these up very soon...




We had a bout 20 minutes left to carry on with out Arkive presentations on endangered animals. Arkive had written a special blog post all about the pinwheel snail especially for Hannah as they heard she was really interested in this very rare snail! Here she is taking a look... she was delighted :o)


... and here are the 'Koala' group practising their dance.... it starts off on the floor!!


 Finally, just as we were about to go home, we saw a beautiful male pheasant right under our bird table! We all rushed to the window... a bit too fast and scared it away. We managed to get a shot of it going out of a hole in the fence.



Another busy week at WOW! Club!