Life Around Us
A walk in the forest
Name what makes four forest animals easy to tell apart, count the parts that make a small creature an insect, and play out how a web of connections falls apart when one strand goes.
The class went to Pachmarhi for a nature trail, and their guide was Abha Didi, a nature scientist. She studies plants and animals, and the first thing she said was not about what they would see: it was that the group had to be sure they did not harm anything in the forest while they looked.
Leave it as you found it
The rules printed at the forest gate are short and they are mostly about holding back. Do not tease the animals. Do not feed them. Do not damage the trees and flowers, or anything built there for visitors. A forest is somebody's home, and a visitor is a guest in it.
Have a play
A leaf, close up: its blade, its veins and the stalk it hangs by.
Tap any part of the picture.
Worked example
There are footprints in the mud at the edge of a pond, and no animal in sight. What can you work out?
Start with what a print at a pond tells you for certain: something came here to drink.
That is the children's own first thought at the pond — the question is which animal, not whether one came.
Try it together
Let us build a strand of the web of life, together.
In the game each player holds a card — a plant, an animal, or something like the Sun or a river — and the yarn is passed from one to the next along a connection.
1.One player's card says Tree, another's says Bird, and the yarn goes from the tree to the bird. What does the game say a tree provides for a bird?
Have a go
Your turn. In the leaf autograph activity, which way up does the leaf go on the notebook?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.