Woodland Finding October 1, 2008
Posted by wgordon in : Curriculum for Excellence, Eco schools, P6, School grounds , trackbackPrimary 6B are studying woodlands. We are comparing our woodland to rainforests.
We went outdoors to take a look at different types of leaves we could find and the different trees around our school. We found more than we expected.
Jack McKenzie found a caterpillar feeding on a leaf. Miss Storrar told us to take it inside and we put it in a tub with some oak leaves. We studied the type of leaf we found it on and discussed what the caterpillar looked like.
We then used a caterpillar identifying website to find out what type of caterpillar it was. http://www.whatsthiscaterpillar.com
We looked at various pictures of caterpillars and narrowed it down to a few possibilities.
We decided that it must be a ‘Dichonia aprilina’ caterpillar because of the markings on his body and the type of leaf it was eating, an oak leaf.
We thought it was pretty strange that a caterpillar was out at this time of year, because you rarely see butterflies in the autumn. We then found out that this caterpillar was actually going to turn into a moth. We found a picture of what the caterpillar will look like when it changes! We also learned that his appearance helps it to camouflage, because the lichen on the trees is the same colour as its body.
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What a fantastic effort P6A. I really enjoyed reading about your woodland adventure. Keep up the good work and keep giving me more information to post on the blog.
What a fantastic post Primary 6. You really taught me a lot about the caterpillar you found. How did you find out more about it and what it would turn into?
To find out the information about the caterpillars we found, we checked out the site below.
http://www.whatsthiscaterpillar.co.uk/
The way we find out what kind of caterpillar they were, we tried to figure out what leaf Jack Mc find him on.We then found out that the caterpillar was on a oak tree leaf. Then we checked the pictures of what kinds of caterpillar live on oak leaves. We looked very closely at our caterpillar and matched him to the number 15 picture of the caterpillar. That is how we found out the type of caterpillar we had. We then checked that this was correct by typing in the name ‘Dichonia aprilina’ into google images. it brought up another webpage http://ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?bf=2247
that had pictures of the caterpillar and the moth that it was going to turn into.