What a fantastic trip Bluebirds had to Twycross Zoo! They learned such a lot about biomes and why they are so important to all of life on earth.
Biodiversity is all the different kinds of life you’ll find in one area—the variety of animals, plants, fungi, and even micro-organisms like bacteria that make up our natural world. Each of these species and organisms work together in ecosystems, like an intricate web, to maintain balance and support life. Biodiversity supports everything in nature that we need to survive: food, clean water, medicine, and shelter.
The children first played a game where they place animals in different habitats: mountain/sea/rainforest/savanna. They learned through this that, although we think of penguins only living in the Antarctic in fact you can find some penguins in South America.
Bluebirds went on to look at food webs and how each plant, animal, insect, fungi, and bacteria played an important part in the life cycle of that biome. We also learned that in every biome you will find some keystone animals that all other life is supported by. In Africa, the rhinos is a keystone creature as they eat the bushes to keep them under control and stop them taking over the savanna. Rhinos also spread the seeds of the bush in their poo, making sure new plants can grow because their poo in very rich in nutrients. Rhinos love to wallow in mud this helps new waterholes to develop creating more place for other creatures to drink from, such as giraffe. In a healthy biome all life supports each other and this showed the children the reason why we need to look after our earth.
Bluebirds learned about the 4 R’s: Re-use, Re-cycle, Reduce and, maybe one that we may never think of, Refuse.
Thank you Twycross Zoo for all we have learned on our trip.
