Wilder School - Somerleyton Primary School

This was our first session at Somerleyton Primary and we worked with the Year 3, 4 and Year 5 chidlren.  We started off by carrying out an audit of the school grounds and the existing habitats. We measured the size of the playground and the learning area and counted the number of trees. We then explored the allotment and recorded how many minibeast homes, log piles, nest boxes and pollinator pitstops were already there as well as measuring the area of the flowerbeds. 

In the afternoon, we did a bug hunt  in the allotment and then created a natural collage from collected materials. We also thought about how to fundraise the project and came up with lots of fantastic ideas. 

During our second visit to Somerleyton we started off the day by working with the reception children. We hunted for bugs in the learning garden and then had a think about how we can encourage more bugs into the area. We then created journey sticks from the natural materials we could find. 

The rest of the day was spent with the year 5 and 6s, where we constructed a new bug hotel for the allotment, thinking carefully about the materials to add to it and what invertebrates may take up residence. We also built a hedgehog house and weeded the vegetable beds so our produce can thrive. 

We were very excited to be back for our third visit to Somerleyton! 

We started the day by chatting with the Green Team to discuss how to make the school greener and ways Suffolk Wildlife Trust can support their work over the next year. 

We spent the rest of the day with class 1 (year 1 and 2) and had a hedgehog themed session. We began with a hedgehog quiz and then headed outside to learn about hedgehog hibernation. In groups, we first had to find pieces of hedgehog food, so their hedgehog had enough brown fat to enable them to hibernate through the winter. Once enough food was collected, we made hibernation nests for our knitted hedgehogs and measured the hedgehog’s temperature before and after placing them in their nest to understand what benefits hibernation has to hedgehogs. 

In the afternoon, we went to the allotment to hunt for bugs and created giant hedgehog collages using the fallen leaves.

Our 4th visit to Somerleyton was focused on birds! 

We spent the morning with class 3 where we started with bird quiz. We then headed out on a walk around the village using binoculars to look for birds and noting done any species we saw. The green team then used this information to create a bird spotter sheet that can be used at their lunchtime birdwatching club. To help encourage birds to the school site we then made pinecone and apple bird feeders. 

The afternoon was spent with reception class and it started to snow therefore the first part of the session HAD to be spent playing in the snow! We then made bird feeders to hang up in the learning garden to help the birds during the wintery weather. We then finished the afternoon by making and decorating binoculars out of cardboard tubes and then using them to look for birds that we hid around the classroom. 

For 5th visit to Somerleyton we spent the morning with class 3! 

Sadly we found out that we are no longer able to use the allotment for our project but this did not stop us as we have decided to turn our focus to the learning garden, We started by looking at the allotment and deciding what we liked about the allotment and if we could implement any of these ideas in the learning garden. The bug hotel and the flower beds were decided as the most important things to create / move. We then spent the rest of the morning researching the best plants  to use, what materials we need for the project and creating posters to encourage people to donate / support the project. 

Class 3 seemed very excited to see how the project progresses and next time we will start actioning these ideas!