Summer term is a great time to use the school garden for lessons such as science - searching out the insects and other animals that live in your school garden, by going on a bug safari! The school garden can provide a useful example of food chains with plants eaten by slugs that are eaten by beetles or frogs! Lady bird larvae are about now and can be seen munching on green fly or black fly on broad beans.

I worked with St Andrews CofE Primary School in Hitchin this week.  The Year 4 class came into the garden as a whole class to go on a 'bug safari' 

Gardening with a whole class is tricky so to cope with the large group I divided them into 4 groups with 4 activities based around bugs in the garden.

One group searched for minibeasts with pooters and magnifier pots in the vegetable garden and adjacent wildlife garden.  We used key charts from The Field Study Council to identify the different bugs. The flowery bank in the wildlfie area was great for watching different bumble bees at work collecting pollen from the cornflowers.

One group sowed annual seeds of flowers that attract beneficial insects. There is still time to sow  annuals such as nasturiums and sunflowers to flower in the September.

The third group made slug traps for the vegetable garden using plastic bottles. They cut  a letter box opening about half way up the bottle. They mixed up a solution of yeast, sugar and water to attract the slugs to the trap. This solution is put into the bottle. The bottle is then placed close to vulnerable crops (strawberries, pumpkins and courgettes). The solution has to be changed once a week to remove the dead slugs and refreshed with new yeasty mixture.

The fourth group made model insects using air drying clay and materials they found around the garden. There was time to carousel around the different acitivies.

The children enjoyed being outside and seeing the many insects there are at this time of year in the garden.

You can attract insects into your garden by sowing hardy annuals such as conrflowers, poppies, love-in-a-mist and marigolds.

There is a useful guide to plants that attract wildlife on the RHS Campaign for School Gardening Website 

Next week is National Insect week - so why not go out into your school garden and look for the variety of life that is there. There are lots of valuable resources to help you identify and record insects in your school garden.