After the rain

After a good amount of rain this week, we were hopeful of finding a variety of bugs around school, and we were right! Two skinks, a huhu beetle, a flying ant, and what we think is a baby slater. Plus two mystery bugs that we are yet to identify: if you recognize either, please let us know!

This little bug had a silvery back and was found on a web, but we don't know whether it made the web, or was caught on it...

A new find!

Today we found two skinks!

We realized how good they were at camouflaging themselves when we wanted to take photos: They hid so well in the mini habitats we had made for them in our boxes...

Dry conditions

After a few dry days, the bugs that prefer shady, damp places were much harder to find, and between us we only found three slaters, one snail, one spider and a few ants. 

We hoped the little shower of rain we had would bring them out, but it wasn't quite wet enough.

Today's finds...

Can you spot the centipede?

We found lots of worms... So hopefully that means we have great soil at school!

Finding out about our bugs

Today, after we had been on our bug hunt, we spent some time checking through our bug cards to make sure we had identified our bugs correctly.

Then we got out our big pile of library books and had a chance to have a browse, to see what sort of information the books gave us, to see what sort of creatures we might come across, and to think about how we might find out some new things about our own bugs.

Searching skills

Another sunny afternoon searching for bugs. We had a think about the best places for searching, from last week: where did we find different kinds of bug or beast? Several groups decided to do a bit of digging, and we found a lot of worms! Snails and slaters liked shady places, and ants seemed to like to live under rocks.

After our search, we had a go at matching our bugs with named picture cards, and we are collecting a pile of library books, plus of course Internet access, to help us start learning about our creatures' needs and habits.

A great first day!