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Sit spots and mindful moments

Posted: Jun 11, 2018 by: Tara (Tara) on: Forest Blog

We have been so fortunate to have Evie’s grandad, John Harcourt, join us for an hour each week this term, to share with us his knowledge of birds and of bird watching.

The Year 3 children all really appreciated this special time and learned so much more about each other as well and they really were buzzing.  

Summer is finally here and we all carefully explored the school pond and learned some facts about the different creatures we found.

The newts were of particular interest! Here are some interesting facts that the children learned.

*Newts are amphibians, which means they live in water and on land.

*Newts overwinter and look for somewhere that will protect them from the frost and then, in the early springtime, they gather in the pond to breed.

*They lay their eggs on small broad-leaved plants, carefully wrapping each one up in a leaf.

*A baby newt is a tadpole, hatches from an egg and is born with gills, so must stay underwater to breathe. A young newt in the larvae stage has feathery gills outside their body (which they later lose). All newts can breathe through their skin, through a process called diffusion. When they become efts, this juvenile larval stage is mostly terrestrial and they develop lungs so that they can breathe on land, but they must keep their skin moist. As adults they return to the water and spend the remainder of their time there. The oxygen in the water is absorbed and diffused directly into the animal’s blood vessels, through the skin as they no longer have gills.