The Blue Planet is an excellent resource to support your children's learning. It covers a great deal of the science National Curriculum, enhancing what your children are already learning in school. Follow these links to the teachers' pages for more ideas linked to Key Stage 1 and 2 Science, and to Key Stage 3 & 4 Science. And you can see where Blue Planet Challenge ties in to the National Curriculum for Geography at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3.
You could also look at your children's school work to see what they are studying at the moment and find out how you can support this further.
Why not develop some of these ideas with your children? The main educational theme running through the series is habitat, and how different animals and plants are adapted to survive in their own environment. You can support these ideas in a number of ways, by visiting some of these local habitats with your children:
A local pond
A wood
The seaside, in particular looking at rock pools
A river
Your own garden
These are all habitats that will provide you with useful and interesting information.
Each habitat that you look at has the conditions needed for the plants and animals living there to survive. These factors will be the right amount of light, water, oxygen availability and a suitable temperature.
There will be different populations of animals and plants that have adapted to survive in the habitat that you are looking at. You could draw some of these organisms with your children and identify them using books from the library or using CD-ROMs and the Internet. Try to establish what features of the organism make them suitable for the habitat in which they live. For example, different birds have differently-shaped beaks to suit their own particular diet.
You could also look for ways in which organisms compete, perhaps for food or space. Only plants and animals that compete successfully survive, so competition also affects the size of the population. Look for examples of competition between members of the same species as well as that between different species.
In your own garden, the dandelion is an excellent example of a successful competitor. Draw one with your children and decide which features make it so successful and which make it such a nuisance!
The dandelion grows quickly and flowers twice a year
It produces hundreds of seeds that can be spread by the wind
Its roots grow very deep and are very hard to remove
It grows very well on bare soil
Look for examples of predators in the habitats and also at how their prey has adapted to avoid becoming the next meal. Some animals might be camouflaged to blend in with their environment. Hoverflies for instance have similar markings to bees and wasps, however they have no sting and could be eaten.
You may wish to discuss the impact of our own activity on the habitat that you are looking at. Is there any pollution? You could collect examples of news articles that describe pollution and its effect on the environment and discuss these with your children.
Visit the zoo and decide what features all the different animals have to help them survive in the habitat that they came from originally, before they were captured. For example, polar bears have thick white fur and lots of body fat to help them survive arctic temperatures. How might these adaptations affect them in their new habitat and do they need special help to cope?
Try to use information from the zoo to identify whether these animals were predators or prey in their natural environment.
The Blue Planet will provide you with lots of information that will help you learn about habitats and adaptation.
You will be learning all about habitats at school and your learning doesn't have to stop there. If you have a garden, spend some time getting to know what lives there. You will be amazed at the number of different species of animals and plants in your own garden and, what's more, they have adapted well to survive there.
Why not keep a log of the different animals that visit your garden on a daily basis? If you have learnt all about adaptation, try to explain how the animals and plants that you have found have adapted to life in your garden. If you have learnt about food chains and food webs, make one to show the feeding relationships in your garden. You might be able to expand it as you see new animals visiting your garden from time to time.
Whenever you visit a new habitat, keep your eyes open. There will always be animals and plants that have adapted to live there. If you go to the seaside, rock pools are a fascinating habitat. Take time to draw the animals and plants that you see, or photograph them, and then identify them using books from the library, the Internet or CD-ROMs. As with your garden, try to draw a food chain or web for the habitat that you are visiting, look out for predators and prey and try to explain how the prey are adapted to reduce the risk of them becoming the next meal for a predator. Also, think about how the predators are adapted to catch their favourite dinner.
You might visit woodland, parks, ponds or riversides. Be very careful in all of these places as they can be dangerous as well as fascinating. If you go away on holiday, you will probably see animals and plants that you don't see in this country, take lots of pictures!
When visiting a habitat, make sure that you leave it as you found it, don't remove anything, don't disturb the inhabitants and don't leave any litter!
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