Week 4 of the John Muir Award

Week 4 (I can't believe it's been 4 weeks)

I can't actually properly remember anything about my life before all this as it was all just fleeting moments from one more thing I had to do at work, one more journey, one more shift, one more walk home, one more trip to collect the kids and cook and look after everything had become a blur. We were running on air. Modern life had become too busy at least for us.

Challenge 1 this week!
What animals would we save if they all disappeared!
Bruce-dogs and cats because they help so many people
Isla-our roborovski hamster (bless her)
Me- deer-we had seen them flocking on a walk before the lockdown it was incredible.
Andy-the bees. Ain't nothing without the bees. We went on a bee spotting walk trying to find bees this weekend after facetiming with our friends who have several bee hives they inherited a few years ago. We learned a lot about bees from them and did the bee identification activity.

This lockdown in a lot of ways has been a way of slowing down to just breathe in my kids. Sure I'm juggling working from home and entertaining them both and trying not to miss my family at this time but the John Muir Award has been a great way to get outside, get a break and look around. I would never genuinely have had time to "discover our wild place" without this so I am grateful.

Challenge 2 was all about finding out about the amphibians and reptiles in Scotland.

Six species of amphibian occur naturally in Scotland, and three common species of reptile are found naturally on land.

Scotland’s native amphibians:

common frog
common toad
natterjack toad
great crested newt
palmate newt
smooth newt

Our native reptiles:

adder
common lizard
slow worm (a type of lizard)

Coll has a colony of sand lizards, introduced to the island some time ago. Several species of marine turtle – also reptiles – have been recorded around the coast. This is definitely going to be a trip for the future for us.

Amphibians and reptiles may be referred to collectively as herptiles.

Herptiles.

What the actual. This is amazing 😂

There's more information about offences relating to the animals above at this link I found interesting

https://www.nature.scot/professional-advice/safeguarding-protected-areas-and-species/protected-species/protected-species-z-guide/protected-species-amphibians-and-reptiles

Bruce and Isla and I worked outside in the garden on common frogs together and learned about the frog life cycle. I am exceptionally proud of them. They're still only young. I quartered a sheet of A4 and they had to put a stage of the life cycle in each quarter.

There's always more frogspawn than frogs at the end though as they make a tasty treat for some beetles at the start of the cycle and indeed some birds.

Frogspawn
Tadpoles
Froglets
Adult frogs

Challenge 3 was all about the idea of Scottish Heritages hunt for the big 5 protected animals in Scotland including otters, red deer, harbour seeks,  golden eagles and red squirrel.

We chose our own 5 animals to spot during this lockdown period and have stuck it to our back door so we can try to find them.
We have chosen
BIRDS

The next part of the challenge was to learn about one of the 5 animals in Scottish Heritages list.

Wee Bruce couldn't believe that there was so much plastic in the water. He said we should clean the ocean and harbours immediately and tell people's mummy's on them. 😂👌🦄 We watched harbour seals on YouTube and saw how playful they were and silly.

Next challenge is Challenge 4 and is about Constellations and Moth hunting
 My own personal greatest fear.

Challenge 5 is making a catapult which the kids will adore looking forward to those.

What a brilliant challenge this was and totally doable for the kids.
 We took along some wood themed cuddles. Baby squirell, hungry caterpillar and the Gruffalos Child to be catapulted.

 After the adventures of the toys in the wood was over, we counted our steps going in one direction to help us plan our map of the wood.  It will take planning I tell you it's some stuff.

Came home and did paintings of leaves we found on our walk