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.

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!

WOW Club Feeding Station gets a makeover!

Another busy meeting at WOW! Club as we all worked on re-designing our feeding station that is on our live camera. We wanted to spread the feeders out a bit... and add some more as well.

First we took a milk carton and we used it to make a funnel feeder filler for out seed and peanut. We simply cut a section out of the milk carton and then created a funnel. We then tested out straight away... and it worked brilliantly!

We banged a post into the ground and then took a long piece of wood. We screwed some cup hooks in it, to hang a selection of feeders.....

We then fixed all our bird feeders along the piece of wood....

We moved the camera so it looks along all the feeders. We also have a good view of the bird feeders from school so we can have regular bird watches!

Can you see the log feeder??? One of our pupils made some of these with his grandad and brought them into school.... brill aren't they!!

We were all very proud of our new feeding station and we hope the birds really like it too!

It was getting dark, so we came into school. We started doing some information cards to go near the feeding station. We talked about which birds might come and then we each chose one species. We started to work on the computers .... our info cards were soon looking GREAT!!!

Thank you Ark Wildlife!

Wildlife Club were very excited this week to receive some goodies from Ark Wildlife! Ark had kindly sent Ms MacRae some kit from their warehouse clear-out! We were delighted to have two new hedgehog houses for our wildlife area and a frog house too!


Ark Wildlife have a website where you can buy loads of wildlife goodies... so take a look if you have a chance!

Here we are with these three homes for wildlife in our Wildlife Area....

 We talked about each wildlife home and where we should put them. We are probably a bit late for hibernating hedgehogs now, but we filled them with some hay and leaves... just in case! We chose two places to put them. We placed the first one under a bush, next to the wall.....

We covered it with some leaves and foliage.
We placed the second one up near our log pile, by an old fence....

We decided to place this little ceramic frog and toad home up near our pond. We made a little hollow in the long grass near the pond and nestled it in there. We hope some frogs move in because Ms MacRae was surprised to find out that some of us had never seen a frog close up!!

We want the other pupils to know about these homes and that they must not be disturbed so, as it was getting dark, we came inside and made some signs to go next to the homes. We said what they were and asked pupils not to disturb them. Ms MacRae laminated them and we stapled them onto sticks that we could press into the ground next to each house!

 A good evening's work in WOW Club!! Thank you again to Ark Wildlife for donating these items to school.