THE CHILDREN of Aveton Gifford Primary School spent the latter half of the summer term exploring their local wild spaces.

Thanks to funding from the Aune Conservation Association, Maya Plass from Learn To Sea ran a series of workshops during the school’s ‘science week’.

The different school classes explored different patches of their environment. The youngest class visited their school pond and grounds, the next class the village stream, the year above the tidal road of the Avon estuary, and the oldest class explored South Efford Marsh.

The children were thrilled to see that their local wild spaces confirmed that they lived in a very rich environment.

The school pond had newtlets and a beautiful dragonfly nymph with tiny budding wings, the village stream had lots of invertebrates and even an elver - a young European eel.

The elver had travelled all the way from the Sargasso Sea on the east coast of America!

At the tidal road they found moulting crabs and carried out an estuary beach clean for World Ocean Day.

At the marsh the children learnt about the details of buttercups and made some lovely drawings labelling their parts.

Following on from this, some children also joined an after-school class where they discovered the diversity of plants, bugs and birds that neighbour the estuary.

This was a lovely opportunity for the children to see just how much wildlife they have right on their doorstep and realise how very lucky we all are.

Visit www.ourbogblog.blogspot.co.uk to read more about the activities that took place.