Chaffinches’ class were taken to the Dinnington Community Woodland by two rangers from the Forestry Commission called Adam and Chris. We went to explore the habitats there to compare them with the habitats we have been exploring in our school grounds. First of all, we investigated the pond area to find out what creatures lived there. We pond dipped using nets, magnifying pots and identification charts. We found lots of sticklebacks, tadpoles, beetles and water boatmen and kept them in trays to observe them.
We then went in the very long grass of the meadow with huge nets to see if we could catch any insects and we found hundreds! We had to observe them very closely in magnifying pots and use identification charts to see what we had caught. We found lots of different flies, bees, snails and caterpillars.
Finally, we walked to the bird hide to watch the birds at the scrape and, on route, we tried to identify some of the flowers in the meadow. We had a really enjoyable afternoon where we learnt so much but we were very tired when we got back to school. We are looking forward to investigating the differences and similarities between our school grounds’ habitats and the habitats we visited at the Community woodland.
