Chantelle: When I'm out exploring, I love looking out for living things. And if you look carefully, you can find life almost anywhere. The place where an organism lives is called its habitat. So, this is a woodland habitat. Now what creatures might we find in a woodland habitat?
Cece: Squirrel.
Ethan: A spider.
Cece: Bird.
Ethan: Mouse.
Cece: Worm.
Ethan: Butterfly.
Cece: Slug.
Chantelle: Wow. What a list. And I bet you can't wait to find all the creatures that live here, but for now I have a mission.
Cece: Your mission is to find as many animals and bugs as you can and make a record of them.
Chantelle: Okay team, what might we need to go on a bug hunt?
Cece: A bug jar.
Ethan: A magnifying glass.
Chantelle: And some pencils. Okay, let's gather up our things and go.
Ethan: Oh, I found some birds.
Cece: Oh look, some snails.
Ethan: I found a beetle. Oh, look at my beetles.
Chantelle: Kids. We've found so many different types of living things. We need to use a tally chart to record our findings.
Cece: We want to know what a tally chart is.
Chantelle: Gather round. This is a tally chart. Now you'll notice I've added in some of the animals that we've just seen. A butterfly, a woodlouse, a squirrel, an ant, a beetle, or a ladybird, a worm, a bird and other, which means something that is not on this list but is still an animal.
Now, the reason that we use a tally chart is to record how many of each type of animals we see. So, for every animal we see, we draw a line in the box just like this. And when I saw the butterfly, I would draw one right there. Now we're ready to continue our mission.
Ethan and Cece: Yeah!
Cece: Oh one, two, three, four, five. I see five ants.
Chantelle: Okay Cece, it's time to add them to the tally chart. So, you've just found yourself five ants. So, we're going to put four little lines it's one, two, three, four, and then for number five, we're going to add it on sideways to turn it into a gate.
Cece: Look Ethan, a butterfly.
Chantelle: Add that to the tally.
Cece: Look a squirrel. Ooh, look a slug.
Ethan: Three, four. Ooh, look you found a worm!
Chantelle: Tally it.
Chantelle: Wow. Children what an epic animal hunt. Now it's time to count up our findings. So Ethan, every time we've put a gate, how many is that?
Ethan: Five.
Chantelle: Perfect. So how many butterflies have we found?
Ethan: Six.
Chantelle: Six, well done. Cece, how many woodlice?
Cece: That's five. Then that's five. So, five add five equals ten, then ten add one equals eleven. So, we've got eleven.
Chantelle: Great maths. How many squirrels?
Ethan: Three.
Chantelle: Lovely. All counted up. Well done guys. We've learned so much about the animals that you can find in a woodland.