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Science Should Be... COLLABORATIVE
Hooray! It’s the first session of CEADI and we are feeling Cheerful and not at all Concerned. Are you Curious to get Cracking? Don’t worry, it’s not Complex. In fact, it’s really quite Creative!
To start, we are learning about Collaboration and Conservation
First, you can watch the video of our visit to Leighton Moss (or read the text if you can’t watch it).
We learnt about the RSPB's conservation work and how they make science collaborative.
Then, you can do one of the brilliant collaborative crafts with your friends! Finally, there’s a colouring page full of brilliant bees and fantastic flowers for you too.
Now that you've watched the video and seen how the RSPB champions collaboration in their conservation projects at Leighton Moss, let's get cracking with some more science.
First off, let's define our key terms:
Collaboration
When people work together to complete a task.
Conservation
Carefully protecting plants and animals to make sure that they will be available for as long a time as possible
Collaboration isn't just something that people do. If we look at the natural world around us, we can see lots of examples of plants and animals collaborating too!
A food chain is a good example of natural collaboration because plants and animals depend on each other for food. There are lots of different food chains all around us. We learned about reed beds and some of the different plants and animals that live there.
Plants like reeds and grasses get their energy from the sun. They are called producers because they use the energy from sunlight to make their own food.
Animals (including fish and birds) are called consumers. They eat plants and other animals and do not make their own food.
In reed beds, eels are consumers because they eat plants to live.
Bitterns, the type of bird that the RSPB protects, are also consumers. They eat eels to live.
Animals that eat other animals are called predators. The animals they eat are called prey. In a reed bed, the Bitterns are predators and the eels are prey.
Without producers, consumers couldn't survive. Without prey animals, predators couldn't survive!
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Conservation Craft: Newspaper Plant Pot
Bees are brilliant little creatures, and we couldn't survive without them! To help bee conservation, we can plant bee-friendly flowers, even if it's just in a pot on our windowsill! In today's craft, we can make a plant pot out of newspaper so that we can plant some flowers and help the bees.
You will need:
- a sheet of newspaper
- a clean, empty jar or can
- some soil
- some seeds
1. Take a sheet of newspaper and lay it flat on a table with the long side at the top and bottom.
2 Fold the paper almost in half, taking the bottom towards the top. Leave a strip of about 3 cm at the top. Fold the strip down, like closing an envelope.
3 Put your jar/can at the bottom of your newspaper with the hole facing up.
4 Roll the paper around the jar nice and tightly.
5 Push the ends of the paper into the open end of the jar. It doesn't need to be neat and tidy!
6 Carefully pull the jar out of the rolled paper pot. Put your paper pot on the table with the closed bottom down and squash it to make sure it's closed. Now it's ready to fill with soil, seeds, and a splash of water to grow flowers for the bees.