habitats Archives - Blouberg International School

by gemayel30th January 2020 News0 comments

Exploring Our World

The Year 4’s have had an exciting first 3 weeks of school. We’ve started with an interesting topic in Science: Habitats.

We’ve learned some new scientific terminology such as habitat, micro habitats and adaptations. Last week we got the chance to practically apply our knowledge by exploring the school’s garden. We found loads of animals and insects such as doves, swallows, beetles, butterflies, ants, moths and spiders! Once back in class, we had to draw the habitats and list all the animals we found.

Mrs Schoots also spoke about her class’s pet rats and how they are adapted to live in a cage and what makes them different from rats living in nature. It really helped us to understand how some animals might be able to survive in more than one habitat. We will continue with this topic for the next few weeks.

We are so blessed to live in a country with such a vast variety of animals and plants. It is important that we respect these animals and their habitats – no matter how small they are!

“Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.” –George Eliot

Ria du Plessis
Year 4 Teacher

CREEPY CRAWLIES AT NURSERY

The Nursery is learning about Insects this week. They have enjoyed learning about spiders, snails, dragonflies and many more creepy crawlies. They are discovering where Insects live and what they eat. We went on an ”insect walk” around the playground to inspect where insects live and where they are found.

The artwork they created was inspired, having great fun painting little ladybugs. We made spiders out of paper plates and had bubbles of fun experimenting with water-play with “bugs” in soapy water.
The students have been making worms with playdough and cutting playdough with scissors. This strengthens their fingers and grip, and is very good for their fine motor development.

Jacky Billings
Nursery Teacher

Sailing through Science

In Science this term the Year 4’s have been learning about habitats and the ways animals adapt to their environments.

They went on to create their very own habitats for some slimy friends. Snails sailed into our classrooms and we observed as they adapted to their new found homes and munched on some delicious leaves.

We took our time investigating which leaves the snails preferred to eat, there were many different predictions and some interesting results. The snails enjoyed a comfortable sleepover in the classrooms, with a few plotting a prison break and fleeing their ‘hotels’. The following morning, we were able to come to a few conclusions regarding a snail’s appetite.

The Year 4’s thoroughly enjoyed having these little visitors in class and observing how different animals adapt to different environments. They were able to see how each animal is weird and wonderful in their own way and that even though snails are very slow, with a little perseverance they can complete any task!