Today we went on a trip to Gillespie Ecology Centre. We started our journey catching the 271 bus to Holloway station. From there we made the walk through the Emirates stadium to the Ecology Centre. The children were all very sensible following our safety rules to ensure we arrived safely. At the centre, we were introduced to our workshop leader, Jane and began to play “what’s in the box?” The children had a go at putting their hands into the covered box and retrieving a minibeast or animal we were likely to encounter along our visit. The children named the features of each insect/animal they retrieved and we discussed where we would be likely to find it. We discussed how we knew when a minibeast was an insect, “because it has 6 legs”. From here, we were put into groups and headed to the pond for pond dipping. The children took turns and listened to the instructions to have go at safely dipping their nets into the pond and searching for minibeasts. The other team members would then use their magnifying glasses to have a closer look at what minibeasts they caught while the final member would then tick off each minibeast caught on our sheet. The children thoroughly enjoyed this activity and enjoyed identifying new minibeasts including a water scorpion, newt, pond skaters, diving spider, nymphs, waterlouse and even a ramshorn snail! For the next part of our workshop we headed to the meadow with our bigger nets and containers. The children came across butterflies, wasps, bees, birds, grasshoppers, flies, snails, ladybirds, spiders and aphids and ticked them off their sheets. A great day was had by all and we couldn’t have done it without our parent volunteers! Thank you to all the mums and dads who attended the trip with us and well done to all the Reception children for their excellent participation!
