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Survey of butterfly species
Conduct a survey of how many butterflies of different species are in your area. Work alone or as a class. Consider what conditions you should have for your count to get meaningful results. Enter the data into this graph and analyse the results. Try to find out whether your results tally with results from other surveys.
This project is especially suited to involvement in The Big Butterfly Count organised by the charity Butterfly Conservation (bigbutterflycount.org).
Discussion points
- How long should you do the survey for?
- Over what area?
- How many people will you need?
- What impact will the weather have on your observations?
- Which butterfly was seen the most?
- Which butterfly was seen the least?
- Which butterfly is your favourite?
- What do you know about butterflies?
Teaching tips:
Encourage children to explore their natural environment to see if they can spot any of these butterflies in their surroundings. Data may have to be collected over time for this activity.
Children might like to follow this by colouring a butterfly in ‘Colour a bug’ or learn about the ‘butterfly life cycle’.
Children could find the total scores of butterfly A and butterfly B or identify the most/least popular butterfly. Data may have to be obtained over a period of time for his activity.
Science: Look at the simple ‘Butterfly life cycle’ as part of work on animals including humans having offspring or get children to ‘Colour a bug’.
Show simple scaling, for example, by representing 2 votes with each line of the chart.
Older children could convert between pie and line graphs and have a go at finding the mean (average) score.
Science: Look at the ‘Butterfly life cycle - Advanced’ as part of work on describing the life cycle of insects in ‘living things and their habitats’.
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