WEEK 7
What a fantastic day we had visiting Lorton Meadows and so lucky with the weather! When we arrived we were greeted by a lady called Sam who looks after the meadows and the visitor centre. She told us about the activities that we would be taking part in throughout the day and explained that as there had been so much heavy rain, there probably wouldn't be very many minibeasts to find in the meadow and we would explore the wooded area instead. Here the children were given tree nets to hold under the trees, to shake the branches and catch any minibeasts who were living amongst the leaves and branches. We were very lucky and managed to find moths, damsel fly nymphs, tiny snails and spiders.
The children all loved our other activities which were pond dippng, minibeast hunting under the logs and the play area. During the pond dipping, the children took their nets to the pond, scooped creatures out and them placed them in a tray of pond water for identifying. We were amazed to find so many and they were snails, newts, pond skaters, water boatmen and phantom midges.
In the woods under the logs we discovered many familiar minibeast and carefully scooped them into our bug jars. We them looked at them through magnifying glasses and used an information sheet with photographs, to help us identify the creatures that we had collected. We found moths, snails, woodlice, spiders, ants and froghopper nymphs.
After these fun activities we finished our trip in the play area, climbing, balancing and jumping on all of the apparatus together. We had such a lovely day and shared lots of fantastic learning about minibeasts.
