Join in www.wildclassrooms.org’s ‘60 Species Challenge’

Although designed for use in schools, the project is perfect for home learning and can take place in gardens or during families’ daily exercise.

When individuals or groups register, they are given a virtual tree with bare branches. Each month they will be given five species to spot and when they are recorded on the site, a leaf will appear on their own tree. The more things they spot, the more leaves on their tree! They can also upload photos, drawings and poems of the plants and animals they have spotted to the public gallery. It is suitable for anyone of any age and it aims to celebrate the everyday wildlife that can be seen in our gardens and other local nearby green spaces.

The site incorporates many aspects of the primary curriculum and will help in the overall goal of inspiring a curiosity and fascination about the world and the natural environment, while also covering specific National Curriculum Programme of Study for Geography links.

For example:

• The use of our online maps contributes towards children’s place knowledge and will help in naming and locating places in the UK.
• It contributes to their knowledge of seasonal and daily weather patterns through linking natural occurrences such as when swallows appear with the seasons.
• You can link where spottings occur to key physical features and how the physical geography affects what grows/lives where.
• You can develop their fieldwork and observational skills by plotting where they find the plants and animals on our online maps and link to surveys of school grounds/gardens and plot where species are found.
• It also incorporates compass skills.

For more information, see www.wildclassrooms.org or contact tamsin@stroudvalleysproject.org.