Study update

We have now come to the end of our habitats study for now. The last section was on changing habitats. All the other ideas I come across need outdoor work which would be better done in spring when the minibeasts are easier to find, inshAllah.
We've been working through a few textbook pages recently, but there are three other activities worth mentioning perhaps.
1.Concept checking with food chains. I wasn't sure whether the boys really got how food chains work, so I asked them each to devise a different food chain using reference books we have on deserts and rainforests. There are no food chains in there as such, just various information about what different creatures eat, so they had to read widely and piece it together.
2. Badger Wood is a game about the consequences on wildlife of cutting down a wood to make room for a road. Follow this link, then click on "play", then "games".
3. Today we watched a presentation from Arkive Education, (look in 7-11 Geography, topic "Habitats and Humans"), and discussed what we saw.

Continuing habitats study

English Nature has a useful habitats unit, (scroll down on link page) which we have been working on.
We actually began with an article from a gardening magazine which told us about hedgehogs, blue tits and bumble bees, and how to build nesting boxes for them. It would be nice to build something, but it looks far too complicated.
Then we moved onto the English Nature unit, "Habitats- Are Our School Grounds Hedgehog Friendly?". Well, first we have to change that to garden, but its easy to adapt. I have not used all the lessons, things like sketching parts of the garden would be met with groans, and as I imagine the main purpose of that activity is to get children observing the environment I think that it is less necessary in such a familiar place as the garden, which we have already examined in the course of this study. The boys probably know its less accessible areas much better than me anyway, as they are the ones who go crawling under bushes to retrieve balls they've hit there.
The lesson on food chains was good though. We made the cards for different living things, but as we didn't have 30 children to hold one each, we just laid them out on the floor, and removed the ones which got eaten/killed. We found out any information we didn't already know about what each creature eats and is eaten by, using Arkive and Wikipedia.
Today it is the hedgehog fact file activity, finding out more details about the hedgehog. InshAllah I'll use the rest of the lesson suggestions over the rest of this week and next.
Considering the large number of cats which hang around this garden I don't think we should try to encourage any hedgehogs here. Its a stressful place for wildlife, we see very few small birds. Obviously hedgehogs have their defences, but still...?

Groups and keys links

As part of the science habitats topic this week we have been looking at groups and keys.
At crickweb there is this very useful activity for sorting. Go to keystage two, science, habitats.
At sciencenetlinks there is a fun game for grouping creatures by various criteria. The boys also did the second follow on activity from there today. I'm having trouble with a direct link, but go to the home page, then lessons, scroll down to the 3-5 section, click on Classification2 A Touch of Class, again scroll down to click on touch of class again. It takes a while but is worth it!
J and R also told me about a game called Buzz which uses the format of an identification key.
To finish off we devised a key for identifying a bee, (based on the one in the textbook).

Habitat links

Useful places to learn more about habitats.
1. English nature (go to the primary resources section)
2.Nature Grid
3.Environment agency, design a habitat game (Changing Blooms)

Habitats

We started the habitats topic last week by looking at different habitats within our garden and the creatures that live there. Some microhabitats included the stagnent water above, home to tiny, wriggling worm creatures. I have looked up a real name for them, but can't be sure of their id, being so tiny! There was also the usual, under a stone, under old piece of wood etc.

I read somewhere about putting a flowerpot upside down, as above, to entice small creatures in for observation. None came, so we've set up a pitfall trap, (works like a hefalump trap). There are little creatures still about. Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way!

On a walk this weekend we saw the black duck above.

Yesterday felt lazy, in an offputting way. Things got off to a very slow start. Apart from the pitfall trap, the boys did some maths, looked online at some information about mountains (project pre-reading), did some recitation and we all watched another episode of the French DVD. Actually, using the DVD like that holds their interest really well. In the middle R asked me for a banana, using the French he had just learnt!

Then, at the end of the day we went off to a party we had been told about a few hours earlier. I wasn't really in the mood to go any where, but alhamdulillah it was good to make the effort because the boys met some other boys their age and had fun with them for a couple of hours.