Willow Class visit QMC
This term our Science focus is animals and their habitats. As part of this topic, Willow Class had the opportunity to visit the Science Centre at QMC to find out more.
Worm Cafe, Mrs Roberts
The children were fascinated by the worm cafe. Before opening the lid we talked about what was inside and why it was called a worm cafe. Then we lifted the lid and looked at what we could see; rotten food, soil and worms. We worked out that the rotten food was eaten by the worms and the compost created was actually worm poo!
Then we noticed that as we lifted the lid on each section, the worms were quick to hide away because they like to live in the dark.
After that we made our own worm cafe from drinks bottles and added some worms from the cafe to bring back to school. Most of us were even brave enough to pull them out of the soil with our fingers. It was very tricky to catch them before they hid away. The birds must be very clever to pull them from the soil so quickly! They are now living safely in the dark in our classroom cupboard, waiting to eat our rotten fruit.
Animal Skeletons, Mrs Sumner
As we have been talking about dinosaurs and fossils at school, Mrs Jordan found us some animal bones and x- rays to look at. The children looked at five skeletons; frog, bird, rabbit, cat and fish. We tried to work out what each animal was by looking for clues. We looked at their teeth, beaks and skull to work it out. We decided that the one with the small sharp teeth must be the cat and the one with long flat feet was a rabbit; although it did look a little strange without any ears!
Next we studied lots of animal x-rays. We learnt that those with a backbone are vertebrates and those without are invertebrates. Some of them had matching animal pictures so we were able to be detectives again, matching the x-ray with its owner. We changed our minds quite a lot but had lots of discussions about why.
Finally we looked at a human skeleton and found similarities and differences between our skeleton and the animal skeletons. We felt our own bodies to find specific bones. Our shoulder blades were easy to find.
Pond Dipping, Mrs Jordan
We all had great fun looking for creatures in the six small ponds. Mrs Jordan warned us to be very gentle with our nets when collecting the animals and to look carefully through the magnifying glasses.
One of the ponds was full of tadpoles! They kept swimming to the top of the water for air. Mrs Jordan explained that there was no frog spawn left as it had all hatched into tadpoles.
We found lots of other animals in the other ponds too. Mrs Jordan helped us to identify them using fact sheets and cards. Some of the creatures we found were; water boatmen, leeches, dragonfly nymphs and even a little newt.
Snails, Miss Copping
This was one of our favourite activities. Mrs Jordan had collected some snails from her garden and we found some more hiding in the worm cafe, including a banded snail with a stripe around the middle of his shell. We observed them moving across a transparent sheet and found it fascinating to watch how their foot slid along to make them move. We also looked for their, shell, mouth, tentacles and eyes. When we touched them they quickly curled into their shells. We talked about how this helped to keep them safe from predators.
Then we let them move across different surfaces to see which they preferred. They didn’t like the eggshells or sand very much at all!
Finally we gave them different things to eat to find out what they liked the best. We thought that they would like the leaves but their favourite was a white paste made of flour and water. Although they loved it, they were not as keen by the time the fourth group got to them. We can’t think why!
Click here to find out more about Willow Class.
