May 2008
Each month why not get out
and about, and try something new
Here are some activities you can do on a farm
visit during May. Click
here to see the Soil Association network
of demonstration farms, which are open to visitors.
Mini-beasts - the good, the bad and the ugly
Make friends with mini-beasts…
If you were a mini-beast, where would you live and what would you eat? See what little creatures or mini-beasts you can find living on the farm. Look under stones and dead wood; shake branches to see what falls off onto a piece of white paper; perhaps dig some pitfall traps using yoghurt pots. Look at different areas - the hedges, pasture, arable fields - and see if there is a difference between the middle of the field and its margins.
 Mini-beast drama
Sort your mini-beasts into spiders, beetles, centipedes and so on. Count the different colours. Why might some colours like brown or black be the most common? Why are some coloured really brightly? Camouflage? Danger signals? How many legs do different bugs have? Can you act like your favourite mini-beast? Join with two friends to make a bee with six legs, or more friends and pretend to be a millipede.
Munch lines - who eats whom?
The children are randomly given one of six cards with a picture on it: soil – barley – aphid – ladybird – skylark – fox – fungi. They have to arrange themselves in order to form a munch line (or food chain). When they successfully manage to get the order right, the soil and fungi join hands to form a circle - a cycle of life and energy flow. You then kill off the aphid so it falls out of the chain. This in turn affects the ladybird, which also drops out, then the skylark, then the hawk and so on all down the line. This activity shows that all living things make up a complex food web so that by destroying one organism, it has a knock-on effect for other creatures.
 Did you know?
Organic farms have 1.6 times as many invertebrates (types of mini-beast) as non-organic farms and twice as many spiders. Organic farmers encourage a balanced food web by creating habitats for predatory creatures such as ladybirds. This then helps to provide natural pest control rather than using harmful pesticides. This in turn helps to provide more food for skylarks and so on down the line. Research shows that organic farms are much richer in wildlife because of these and other practices.
Back
to top
|
