River lessons with Leonard Stanley

This morning was the annual day trip to the canal and river for Year 4 Leonard Stanley Primary School. This is the third year I’ve helped deliver activities for it. The focus was Geography so we had three activities – natural river formation, man-made river structures and life in the river. Lis helped me this year set up Riverfly sampling as the activity for Life in the River. There were three groups of 10 who rotated around with about 40 minutes each. I started off by asking them what creatures they thought might live in the river. Then they watched and timed me taking a kick sample in the river. We then headed over to the middle of the meadow where we had set up a lab where they could analyse the samples and identify different types of larvae, beetles, fish and other life swimming around. Finally they wrote down and counted what they had seen into their worksheets. It was a huge pleasure to host the sessions – every child was bright, engaged, asking brilliant questions and…