The Butterfly Game

The Butterfly Game

Creating Bright Flowers

We've been having a ball with the Findon Biodiversity Group (FBG) at Findon Primary School. This weeks session was all about pollination and how butterflies are important in our ecosystems. Over the past few weeks, students have been creating wooden cutouts that replicate a flowers function (bright petals, nectar storage) and we've now installed them on garden stakes and put them in the ground.

At lunch time (and note this is a purely voluntary activity) we've been getting around 20 - 30 students joining in to help create the Butterfly Garden.

The Butterfly Garden Plan

The Findon Biodiversity Group (FBG) have been referring to their garden plan and putting a huge range of butterfly attracting plants into the area. 'We're hoping that butterfly habitat will attract the butterflies' says Anamika.

Collecting Nectar

Today, we worked with all the grade 5 students (Grade 4's were on camp) and had the first attempt at running the Butterfly Game. Students were placed into teams of 4-6 and equipped with a pipette (Nectar sucker) and a bucket (Nectar storage unit).

Butterflies (students) then took it in turns to race down to the flowers and collect a pipette full of nectar (colored water) and then take it back to their 'home'. After 5 minutes, the teams gathered together and measured their nectar.





An interesting spin off from this game was the FBG leaders taking control of the running of the game and providing good educational context for the running of a great team activity.

'We're creating a butterfly garden to attract the indigenous butterflies by using indigenous plants that are good for butterflies and other animals' said James. 'Yes, and this game demonstrates how butterflies are important for pollination' said Emily.

 

- Andrew Stocker (Senior Coordinator Education Services)

Beneficial insects and Butterfly pots

In our last session with CLT OV for 2013, we explored why insects are important to people with the Beneficial Insects – how insects help people activity, evaluating their understanding of this with the Insect/Benefit worksheet, with the majority of students correctly linking insects to their benefit.

The 'Beneficial Insects – how insects help people' activity is available as a resource for teachers.

We harnessed the student’s love of crafty activities to elaborate on this with students Making Butterfly Pots which they potted up with indigenous “butterfly attracting” plants to attract these pollinators to their gardens.

'Creating Butterfly Pots' is available as a resource for teachers.

 

Students finished the year with a bit of friendly team competition being pollinators themselves in the Butterfly Game (which Andrew has also written about).

- Amanda Dare (Education Senior Officer)

Introduction to plant parts and the plant life cycle

Today was my first session at Charles La Trobe Kingsbury. I spent about 20 minutes with each Prep/One class and ran through the same activities. I used large pictures to introduce the ideas of “trees”, “grasses” and “bushes/shrubs” and plant parts: leaves, branches, trunk, roots.

Students generally knew the names of plant parts but did not really know what shrubs or bushes were. When asked ‘what do you call a small tree?’ one boy responded “bonsai”. One girl commented that fig trees had their roots above the ground.

We played a modified version of "head, shoulders, knees and toes” as trees “leaves, branches, trunk and roots” and then "Simon says” also as trees e.g. “Simon says wave your branches in the air”.
The students really enjoyed these activities.

We then ran through the plant life cycle from seed, seedling, sapling to adult tree, introducing the idea that flowers indicate an adult stage. Correlations were drawn to the human life cycle: baby, toddler, teenager, adult. Students seemed amazed at the idea that flowers indicated an adult plant, and that very small plants could be adults as well as big trees.

We then play/interpreted the life cycle by acting out the plant life cycle, growing from seeds, sprouting leaves and growing into tall trees.

With one group there was time to touch some plants that I had brought in, including a paper daisy.

The images used in 'Introduction to Plants' is available as a resource for teachers.

- Juli Atkinson (education staff)