Exploring the Habitats on your doorstep - getting to know what there is in your School Grounds

1. Preliminary survey of the school grounds.

2. Mapping the school grounds and the Habitats there.

3. Carrying out a Butterfly and dayflying Moth Survey in the school grounds.

4. Recording Moths using a light trap.

5. How to create a school wildlife area.

1. Preliminary survey of the school grounds.

What animals and plants can be found in the school grounds and what can we learn about them? This is a very enjoyable and stimulating way to learn about the animals that live in the school grounds - this includes the larger animals (birds, mammals etc) and the invertebrates (minibeasts).

The YPTENC website provide very helpful guidance on minibeasts and bughunts. Link to it here.

Take bugboxes and handlenses out to see what kinds of animals and plants can be found there. Animals are very delicate and should be handled with care. This activity should be carried out quietly and gently; stones and logs should be turned over carefully and then put back into their original positions.

This is a good opportunity to reinforce the importance of respect for living things.

There are several good Minibeasts websites and identification books if you need help with the identification. However, many Minibeasts will only be separated into their main groups – e.g. Millipede, Segmented worm (Annelid) etc. The species names are not so important.

Children should not attempt to catch animals in their bugboxes if they are likely to be damaged in the process: butterflies, moths and dragonflies are too delicate and should be watched and enjoyed but not caught.

Butterfly nets and other sweep nets are suitable for catching butterflies and moths but if a net is used, it should be stressed that the insects are being caught to be examined but will be released as soon as possible. Suppliers of nets, lenses and bug pots: Anglian Lepidopterists.

Pooters are not recommended, as many animals are damaged while being caught and the process of catching tends to become the main challenge for the children rather than an interest in the animals being caught!

Bugboxes that are used for catching slugs, snails and to some extent earthworms, will need wiping out with tissues to remove the slime before other invertebrates are put into them – otherwise spiders and small insects can become horribly tangled up in the slug trails!

For ecological equipment supplies, go to Anglian Lepidopterists website.

A digital camera with a zoom facility is a tremendous asset for recording animals and plants in the school grounds and can be used in conjunction with the Interactive White Board in the follow up analysis of the children’s observations.

The bughunt need only take 15 minutes before the children regroup to examine what they have caught and share their observations with the rest of the group. Back in the classroom, there should be plenty of scope for examining some of the animals caught, sketching them, observing their body structures, their movements and behaviour. This should last up to an hour after which the animals should be released in the areas they were originally caught. This will reinforce in the children’s mind the particular habitat requirements of different animals.

2. Mapping the school grounds and the Habitats there

First you need a plan or a map of the school grounds – use the ‘Magic’ website to download a large scale map if you can. http://www.magic.gov.uk/  Click on Interactive Map, Step 1 click Great Britain, Step 2 click postcode, type in your postcode, then click Open Map. You can increase the scale of the map and use the magnifying tool.

When you have the map you want so that the school and its grounds are shown completely, click the Magic print tool, choose no for the overview and no for the legend in the print options box, leave the map size on the A4 setting. Create Print Page.

Work out whether you want Landscape or Portrait format to print your map. Pull down the File menu on the Magic Print Page, click Preferences, choose landscape or portrait. Click Print. 

Use the Magic site Tutorial section if you need help.

You can find the old maps of your area on http://www.old-maps.co.uk/ . These will enable you to draw interesting comparisons with the modern OS map from the Magic site.

Habitats in the school grounds

Encourage the children to look for the different habitats in the school grounds – e.g. the shrubbery, the regularly mown areas, the long grass round the edges of the field, the hedge bordering the field, the buildings, the compost heap etc. and to see that different habitats suit different animal and plants. Further work on this can involve different groups of children looking at different habitats and carrying out a survey of the animals and plants in them.

3. Carrying out a Butterfly and dayflying Moth Survey in the school grounds

This activity involves the children counting the butterflies and dayflying moths within five metres of a planned walk route through the school grounds, if possible each week in the summer as long as the weather is fine enough.

First design a Butterfly and Moth Survey route through the school grounds  With the map of the school grounds, work out a route that takes in all the interesting habitats and can be divided into (about 5) sections each relating to a different habitat.

Click here for a recording sheet to use on your Butterfly and Moth survey.

Click here to see the weather conditions needed to do a 'fair' survey.

The results of the surveys should provide you with information about the species that use the school grounds, how their numbers vary through the season, and perhaps something about their ecological requirements too.

All your butterfly survey results will be of value to Butterfly Conservation and should be sent in to the recorder at your local branch - to be found on this link.

4. Recording Moths using a light trap

There are small numbers of dayflying moth species that you might see locally, but generally Moths are much harder to record because they fly at night.

However, they are enormously interesting and a moth-trapping session using a light trap followed by an analysis of the catch the next day will be well worth the effort. The numbers and diversity of moths cannot fail to enchant children (and adults!) and there are many opportunities for useful follow-up work, including maths and IT.

For details of moths traps to purchase or to construct from kits, contact Anglian Lepidopterists . However, unless you are planning to make this a regular occurrence, it would be better to find someone to borrow one from.

The best approach is to contact your local moth group through Butterfly Conservation or through the internet, to find out whether a keen knowledgeable person with a light trap would do a trapping session one evening or night at the school (why not make an event of it and involve the PTA and a barbecue!).

Click here: for a list of local Moth Groups to find your closest contact.

In the morning: once the light has been turned off as soon after dawn as possible, the entrance slot should be plugged to stop the moths escaping (and to prevent wrens getting in for a free feast!) and the trap moved into a cool place out of the sun until you are ready to show the children. Don’t cover the whole trap – the moths will think it is night time again and get very excited!  The Moths caught in the light trap can be put into bug boxes for the children to pass round and examine. The larger moths like Privet and Poplar Hawkmoths, Swallowtailed Moths and Large Emeralds will need larger bugboxes – the 80mm square ones are suitable for these.

Link here to the section on moth trapping in the Offwell Woodland Centre’s website with a very nice account of the 2003 'Mothathon' they held there.

5. How to create a school wildlife area

The Young Peoples' Trust for the Environment produces a series of informative guidance sheets including one on improving school grounds for wildlife. Link here.

Butterfly and Moth 'food' plants

In order to thrive in the school grounds, Butterflies and Moths must have

1. suitable flowers to get nectar from.

2. larval foodplants to lay their eggs on.

click back to Butterfly and Moth Lifecycles

1. Nectar Plants

Link here to a useful list of Butterfly Nectar Plants.

An idea for a class activity

Make a poster to encourage gardeners to grow Butterfly nectar plants!

Use the website http://www.british-wild-flowers.co.uk/index.htm to find six of the plants on the Nectar plants list (above) that might attract butterflies into the garden:- 3 spring flowering plants, 2 summer flowering and one autumn flowering.

Combine this with the UKbutterflies website http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/index.php  or the Dorset Branch of Butterfly Conservation website www.dorsetbutterflies.com to find images of British butterflies that are likely to be attracted into the garden, reproducing the photos and pasting them so as to create a poster to encourage people to plant flowers in their gardens that will attract butterflies.

2. Larval Foodplants

Butterflies will only breed in the garden or the school grounds if the foodplants their larvae need are to be found there.

Link here to Butterfly Life-cycles.

Link here to Butterfly and Moth Larval Foodplants Activity sheet.

Visit to a nearby farm or nature reserve for further habitat studies

Mapping Habitats of the site you have visited

You can use the ‘Magic’ site (as above) to make a map of the farm or nature reserve you have visited. A scale of 1:5000 will probably be suitable. The pupils can familiarise themselves with the places they recognize on the map and label them. Then they should think about the different habitats in the area they have visited and colour them in, each colour representing a different habitat and with a key to accompany the map to explain the colours.