We spent this morning in Gillies Hill Community Woodland tapping birch trees and harvesting birch sap with Amos. This was a fantastic opportunity for our children to learn about the changes spring brings to the woods and also to understand more about different types of trees and how to identify birch trees by their distinctive silvery white bark. Amos showed us how he drilled a small hole in the tree to let the sap come out and we watched as it started to drip. The children were so excited that they wanted to try catching the sap on their tongues and told us it tasted amazing!
We learned that birch trees are better at producing sap than most other trees as we tried tapping a willow tree and found that it didnt drip at all. We tied milk cartons to the birch trees to catch the sap and when we checked later it was nearly half full.
Thanks for a great day Amos 😊
Category Archives: Nature Notes
Dragonflies
I saw some dragonflies in my pond yesterday and decided I wanted to learn some more about them. This is what I found out.
Looking at a wasp nest or byke
I found something interesting yesterday that I wanted to show you. A wasp nest is also called a byke. That made me thin about the names we give to different animal homes – I was thinking of a pig living in a sty, a squirrel in a drey and a badger in a sett – can you think of any others?
A tiny caterpillar on a leaf
A little song about caterpillars :
The next verses are
Then he’ll eat the leaves around him til he’s full (munch munch)
Then he’ll eat the leaves around him til he’s full (munch munch)
Then he’ll eat the leaves around him, eat the leaves around him,
Eat the leaves around him til he’s full (munch munch)
A cocoon is what he’s spinning for his home (spin, spin)
A cocoon is what he’s spinning for his home (spin, spin)
A cocoon is what he’s spinning, cocoon is what he’s spinning,
A cocoon is what he’s spinning for his home (spin, spin)
Then he’ll be a butterfly and fly away (flap, flap)
Then he’ll be a butterfly and fly away (flap, flap)
Then he’ll be a butterfly, be a butterfly,
Then he’ll be a butterfly and fly away (flap, flap)
Caterpillar and Butterfly
I spotted these while out walking this week – have you spotted any caterpillars or butterflies?
Bluebells (4 May 2020)
Wild Garlic (4 May 2020)
Beetle (4 May 2020)
Tadpoles (4 May 2020)
Wormery Update
I was asked for an update on how our worms are doing…..







