Our Year 5 excursion to the Botanical Gardens was an absolutely fantastic time! When we first arrived at the Botanical Gardens we were led to an area that we were able to eat in. Then each class were greeted by their ranger. 5 Red had Lyndll,  5 Green had Rachael and later on they had Eloise join in ( she joined in at the bushwalk) and 5 Blue had Sheena. Every class had the same activities but at different times. 5 Red first went to the rainforest flora hunt while 5 Green were at the arid flora hunt. 5 Blue’s first activity was the connection garden. We enjoyed all the activities. The main place we didn’t really like was the bush walk through the Cumberland Plain Woodlands as we kept being annoyed by the flies. There were so many flies!

( 5 Blue: )

5 Blue liked looking and exploring the cool aspects of the rainforest as it was filled with an enormous biodiversity of plants, cool bird calls and even frogs! We went to the Connection Gardens and Sheena, our ranger, played a game similar to ‘What's the time Mr Wolf ’ but instead she changed some of the rules. Sheena told 5 Blue that if we saw a snake we would spread our arms out so it made us look bigger and it would frighten the snake and it would slither away. We liked using the kestrel as it allowed us to see the humidity levels, wind speed and the rainfall. Someone in 5 Blue discovered a small spider nest. Sheena didn't know when it was going to hatch or what species it was. Everyone in 5 Blue was amazed at the amount of frogs that were in the rainforest. That was when Sheena told us about this app to identify frogs by their ribbits.

( 5 Red: )

5 Red’s experience at the Botanic Gardens was super awesome.  We were greeted by our ranger Lyndl who led us to an area we were able to eat in. Lyndl then warned us about snakes and told us if we saw one we should make ourselves look big by spreading our arms out like an aeroplane. First we went walking up the Botanic Gardens to reach the rainforest region. On the way we had a look at many trees, ponds, birds and insects. Once we reached the rainforest region, Lyndl gave us a book filled with different plants we had to find. Once we found the plants we had to tick them off. Next we went to the arid area that was filled with colourful plants. The most interesting part of the arid area was the point where we saw a plant with two legs ( logs ) and the body was just spiky leaves like a pineapple. That plant just looked like a pineapple person, short one of course. Another word for that is dwarf! Next we went to an area where we got to draw leaves and had a look at many different types of plants. One of the student’s leaves was very lengthy. There was a tree and we all took a fascinating photo together. There were ENORMOUS gum nuts on the tree.On our last activity we went bush walking with FLIES and saw many ginormous ant hills!

( 5 Green: )

 On our bushwalk we kept being annoyed by the flies so we began to walk back to our bags when we luckily saw an echidna crouched up in a little ball inside a tiny bit of a tree trunk. Once the echidna began to move, our class started to scream which was really funny. We also saw a rabbit jumping through the tall grass. It was really fascinating. 

Most of Year 5 liked the humid rainforest because of the huge biodiversity of plants. We also used a kestrel to measure the temperature, humidity and wind speed for both the arid and rainforest areas. We all had enjoyed our time at the Botanic Gardens and next time it would be great to do a Q and A with the researchers in the lab.

Witten by: Natasha.K, Lewis.M, Siera, Izabela P, Emma.E and Zoe D