On Thursday September 4th, Reception students visited Wittunga Botanical Gardens. In our STEAM learning we have been investigating pollination, pollinating insects, animals and plants. The Wittunga Botanical Gardens provided the perfect outdoor learning environment to discover the amazing range of flowers, gardens and habitats for these pollinators. Throughout the day we engaged in different learning experiences. We explored the butterfly gardens, looking closely at the interesting plants and flowers and how the insects interacted with them. We watched closely as bees landed on the flowers, sucked up the pollen and then flew off to a different flower. We followed the walking track around the pond, where we saw a billabong, beautiful, grassed areas and more interesting flowers. We were lucky to see dragonflies, bees, butterflies and birds. We created a map of our walk and had to include the different paths that we took and what we saw. We then spent time at the pond where there were different ducks, birds and turtles who came right up to see us. It was peaceful and beautiful watching the animals in their habitat and we sat on the rocks and drew pictures of the animals that we could see. After all our learning we enjoyed the interesting and fun playground and ate our lunch together on the grass.
After noticing the wonderful range of pollinating plants and flowers at the botanical gardens, we are now going to compare what we find with our own school environment. We will go on a scavenger hunt to see what types of pollinators we have in our school gardens and how we can help to create our own butterfly garden that can attract pollinators, which is going to be our team’s STEAM project.