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For PDSB Educators: if you are looking to reach out to the Peel Field Centres for further ways to connect your learning to the environment visit the PDSB Field Centre Share Point site.
For PDSB Educators: if you are looking to reach out to the Peel Field Centres for further ways to connect your learning to the environment visit the PDSB Field Centre Share Point site.
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
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Black Bear
Black Bear
Click on the video to learn to draw the boisterous Black Bear!
Click on the video to learn to draw the boisterous Black Bear!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Black Bear!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Black Bear!
There are as many as 100 000 black bears in Ontario. They live in forested areas where they will eat mainly fruits, nuts and succulent plants and drink from streams or ponds. They will hunt and eat fish during spawning season, and if it is possible, they will ambush a fawn or moose calf in the spring.
As cubs they weigh approximately 1 lb when born and can get to be: males - up to 500 pounds and females: 90 to 300 pounds with a life span of 20-30 years
Depending on where they live hibernation can last anywhere between 2 to 7 months. When bears hibernate, their body temperature drops from 38 C to 33 C, and their heart rate goes from 50 beats a minute to 10. They don’t eat, drink, urinate or defecate. Females will also give birth in January while in hibernation.
Hibernating bears lose at least half their body fat, but — amazingly — they don’t lose any muscle mass or much calcium from their bones
Lean Black Bears may exceed 45 km/hour, they can run well downhill or uphill. Climbing speed in trees is also very fast with the use of the short, sharp and curved claws. They climb trees to find food, escape predators, or to sleep. They also have a great ability to swim long distances.
Their sense of hearing far exceeds human ranges and their sense of smell is extremely good - to the level of 5 times more sensitive than a dog.
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
Materials:
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Butterfly
Butterfly
Click on the video to learn to draw the brilliant Butterfly!
Click on the video to learn to draw the brilliant Butterfly!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Butterfly!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Butterfly!
Butterflies' life cycle has 4 stages: egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis) and adult. The transformation is a masterpiece of nature.
Antennae are sensory organs used to pick up chemicals in the air, which may be anything from the smell of flowers to the scent of a potential mate. They also help with balance and in detecting motion.
Butterflies have compound eyes made up of many smaller “eyes”. These eyes are all pointed in slightly different directions, butterflies can see forwards, backwards, above and below themselves all at the same time. Butterflies can also see ultraviolet light.
The proboscis is the butterfly’s mouth-part. It is used like a straw to suck up liquids such as flower nectar, water, fruit juices, leaking tree sap, animal sweat, or other things depending on the species. Butterflies are able to sip on liquids with their proboscis, but are unable to pierce or break skin.
The wings are covered with coloured scales, that give colour to the wings. Patterns on the wings can help camouflage the butterfly, warn predators that a butterfly is poisonous, surprise or distract predators with flashy displays, and help a butterfly attract and communicate with others.
A butterfly’s feet also helps it to taste. Special sensors pick up chemicals from the surfaces they walk on, which helps the butterfly to sense tasty liquids or identify host plants for their caterpillars.
There are an estimated 18,000 butterfly species found globally. The earliest known butterfly fossils date back to 40–50 million years ago.
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
Materials:
Paper
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Dandelion
Dandelion
Click on the video to learn to draw the determined Dandelion!
Click on the video to learn to draw the determined Dandelion!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Dandelion!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Dandelion!
The name dandelion comes from the French, dents de lion, which means “teeth of the lion,” and refers to the jagged edges on the leaves of the dandelion plant
Dandelions are perennials. They can regrow from the root systems even if the flowering head has been removed for up to 10 years
Up until the 1800s people would pull grass out of their lawns to make room for dandelions and other useful “weeds” like chickweed, malva, and chamomile.
Dandelions have one of the longest flowering seasons of many wildflowers
Each flower head can produce 174 seeds, multiple times in a year as each plant can produce as many as 12 flowers within a year. After we see the blooming yellow flower, it transfers into a puff like flower with seeds attached to a single “helicopter” that carries the seed in the wind to a new potential growth spot.
In the morning the flower opens to the sunshine and closes in the evening
They have a tap root that can extend as far as 36 cm into the ground and the stem can reach a maximum of 45 cm tall.
Every part of the dandelion - root, leaves, flower is useful in different ways throughout the growing season
Pharmacists in 19th-century England made tea from roasted dandelion roots. The drink is still trendy today, thanks to a coffee like taste and color without caffeine.
Raw greens of a dandelion can provide vitamin A to any meal
Flowering parts can be used as dye to add yellow colour to materials or used to make tea or wine
Dandelions are a source of pollen and nectar for bees but they are not the only or best source of pollinating flowers. The abundance of dandelions does make it easier to collect nectar/pollen.
Sources:
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
Materials:
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Pencil
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Dragonfly
Dragonfly
Click on the video to learn to draw the dancing Dragonfly!
Click on the video to learn to draw the dancing Dragonfly!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Dragonfly!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Dragonfly!
Long before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, dragonflies took to the air. They were much larger, but they have been dated back at least 300 million years ago.
The dragonfly nymph starts its life in water and breathes through its anus. Additionally, when the dragonfly expels water from its anus, it is propelled forward, which helps the nymph move around.
A single dragonfly can eat 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes per day, making them natural mosquito control. They're so skilled that they have up to a 95 percent success rate when hunting.
They’re amazing fliers. They have two sets of wings so they can fly straight up or down, fly upside down and hover, and can even go backwards. They can fly between 27- 61 km per hour.
In some cultures, if a dragonfly lands on your head, it is actually considered good luck
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
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Eastern Cottontail
Eastern Cottontail
Click on the video to learn to draw the cautious Eastern Cottontail!
Click on the video to learn to draw the cautious Eastern Cottontail!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Eastern Cottontail!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Eastern Cottontail!
Rabbits are coprophagous, meaning that they eat their own feces to better digest plant material. The first excretion, moist and greenish in colour is partially digested food and rarely seen as it is eaten quickly.
The female may produce 3 to 5 litters a year with an average of 5 young per litter. Females will breed when they are only 3 months old. Their lifespan is usually less than a year but could be up to 7 years with ideal conditions.
Two weeks after being born the young are ready to leave the nest. By this time, their mother is probably pregnant again.
When a predator passes by, rabbits will freeze, in an effort to go unnoticed. If found, they can run extremely fast, often resorting to a zig-zag pattern to shake their pursuer. Most of all, they rely on reaching protective shelter such as burrows or brush piles.
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
Materials:
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Great Blue Heron
Great Blue Heron
Click on the video to learn to draw the grand Great Blue Heron!
Click on the video to learn to draw the grand Great Blue Heron!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Great Blue Heron!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Great Blue Heron!
Great Blue Herons are the largest heron in Canada. Adults stand over 1 m high with their necks outstretched, but despite their impressive size they only weigh around 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs)
Great Blue Herons can hunt day and night thanks to an adaptation within their eyes that improves their night vision. An adult heron can easily consume up to 1lb of fish in a day.
Specially shaped neck vertebrae allow the Great Blue Herons to quickly strike prey at a distance. Their main food is small fish, but on occasion, it also eats shellfish, insects, rodents, amphibians (mostly frogs), reptiles, and small birds.
The birds sometimes nest alone, but often do so in colonies consisting of a dozen to several hundred pairs. They build their nests close to their feeding grounds up in trees. The term for these colonies is “heronry”.
Within 10 weeks the young herons leave their nest for good and are independent of their parents. From one to four chicks are raised, with two or three being most common.
Herons have few natural enemies. Eagles occasionally attack them, and crows, ravens, gulls, birds of prey, and raccoons prey upon the eggs and young; mortality of the young is high, but often for reasons other than predation.
They can be identified while in flight as they tuck their neck closer to their body and their legs trail behind them to create a streamline shape.
Great Blue Herons live long lives, some as long as 17 years
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
Materials:
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Honey Bee
Honey Bee
Click on the video to learn to draw the humorous Honey Bee!
Click on the video to learn to draw the humorous Honey Bee!
Enjoy some neat facts about Honey Bee!
Enjoy some neat facts about Honey Bee!
Bees are the only insect in the world that makes food that humans can eat - HONEY.
Every 3rd mouthful of food is produced because bees are pollinating plants. Flowering plants rely on bees for pollination so that they can produce fruit and seeds such as apple, strawberry, broccoli, cauliflower, avocado, raspberry, blueberry, almond, carrot, and many more.
Nectar is a sweet watery substance that the bees gather from flowers. After they process the nectar in their stomach they regurgitate it into the honeycomb cells. The final result is honey.
Honey has natural preservatives so that bacteria can't grow in it. Honey was found in the tombs in Egypt and it was still edible.
The female honey bees are the worker bees and they do all the work for the hive. Workers perform tasks inside the hive such as feeding and taking care of the babies and queen, building honeycombs, guarding the hive; and outside the hive they gather nectar and pollen from flowers, collect water and more.
The male bees in the hive are called drones. Their job in the hive is to find a queen to mate with and reproduce. They are smaller than worker bees and the queen and do not have a stinger.
Honeybees must collect nectar from about 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey. It requires 556 worker bees to gather a pound of honey. The average worker bee makes about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
Honey comes in different colours and flavours based on the flower where the nectar was gathered.
Bees communicate through chemical scents called pheromones and through special bee dances. They do two different dances based on how far away the nectar is from the hive - the waggle or the round dance.
Beeswax is produced by the bees as well. Bees have special glands in their stomach that secrete the wax into little wax pockets on their stomach. The bee takes the wax and chews it with her mandibles and shapes it to make honeycomb.
Although bears do like honey, they prefer to eat the bee larvae.
Source: https://www.ontariohoney.ca/all-about-honey
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
Materials:
Paper
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Eraser
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Lady Beetle
Lady Beetle
Click on the video to learn to draw the lovely Lady Beetle!
Click on the video to learn to draw the lovely Lady Beetle!
Enjoy some neat facts about Ladybug (beetle)!
Enjoy some neat facts about Ladybug (beetle)!
Lady bugs are technically beetles, not “true bugs” as their body parts are different.
They are considered omnivores, but can consume 5000 Aphids in a lifetime and supplement their diet with plant material.
The colouring of a lady beetle helps to warn predators that they don’t taste good. The brighter their colour the more awful they taste. When they feel threatened they secrete an oily, foul smelling liquid from their leg joints.
Not all lady beetles are red with black spots. There are many variations and different colours from different shades of red to yellow as there are 5000 different species in the world. They can also have spots, stripes or no marking.
The number of spots on a beetle does not represent how old they are as there are some beetles with 16 spots and their lifespan is a maximum of 2 years.
The lifespan of a lady beetle is between 1 - 2 years. The larva of lady beetles (baby) looks like a small alligator before transforming into what we know as an adult flying lady beetle.
During the cold winter months they hibernate. Their colonies can be in the 1000’s to stay warm under a log or in cracks of buildings
Birds, dragonflies, frogs, wasps and spiders have all been known as a predator for lady beetles.
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
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Praying Mantis
Praying Mantis
Click on the video to learn to draw the persistent Praying Mantis
Click on the video to learn to draw the persistent Praying Mantis
Enjoy some neat facts about the Praying Mantis!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Praying Mantis!
Praying mantises are supremely gifted when it comes to camouflage. They come in the form of leaves and sticks and branches, like many insects, but also take it a bit further. They can look like flowers or even turn black to mimic a leaf burnt in a fire.
They can see in 3-D from their 2 large compound eyes and triangular head. They also have three spare simple eyes located in between their large eyes.
Praying mantises only have one ear, and it is located on the underside of their body.
Praying mantises wait to ambush or patiently stalk their prey; but once they’re ready to strike, they do so with lightning speed which is hard to see with the naked eye.
They have spikes on their legs to skewer, called raptorial forelegs that pin the victims into place in order to, usually, eat their prey head first.
Female mantises lay an especially large bunch of eggs, which means they need a lot of food. Which means, unfortunately for their partners, they may literally bite off their head and devour them.
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
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Red Fox
Red Fox
Click on the video to learn to draw the resourceful Red Fox!
Click on the video to learn to draw the resourceful Red Fox!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Red Fox!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Red Fox!
They are shy, secretive and very intelligent in nature. They have been portrayed very differently in many children’s stories, but farmers are coming to appreciate their hunting of small crop destroying pests.
Red foxes have excellent eyesight, a keen sense of smell and great hearing to help them hunt. Unlike other mammals, they can hear low frequency sounds which helps them to hunt animals even under snow or ground.
They have small feet to assist them in being quiet while listening or smelling for prey
Foxes are omnivores with the main source of food being small mammals, but throughout the spring and summer they supplement their diet with fruits and berries.
Even if they do not need food in the moment, they will cache dead prey to use at a later time
Male adult fox is called a dog, an adult female is a vixen and their young are kits or cubs
Their large tail is used like a blanket in the cold months to curl up under as they tend to be in open areas or grass thickets while resting
Fox urine has a strong skunk like smell that they use to mark their territory
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
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Snail
Snail
Click on the video to learn to draw the slippery Snail!
Click on the video to learn to draw the slippery Snail!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Snail!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Snail!
There are many types of snails, the biggest difference is if they are aquatic or terrestrial. The diet of snails includes dead and living plant material, carrion, fungi, moss and insects. They also try to get a diet that is full of calcium to keep their shells thick and healthy.
Snails have sensory organs referred to as tentacles. There are often two pairs: the larger, upper pair have eyes at their tips, and the lower pair are used as a sensory organ for detecting odor. They can retract these tentacles when they feel threatened.
Although snails do not have legs, they can move thanks to a “muscular foot”, based on wave movements, it allows the snail to go from one place to another. This action is made easier with the mucus they secrete.
The most common enemies of land snails are small vertebrates, invertebrates, birds, and mammals. They are not usually victims of large animals. They do have a few defenses to help themselves out:
When they feel danger they lock themselves into their shell and cover the opening with a layer of mucus. When an animal attacks the snail will secrete extra mucus
They hide beneath the ground and live in areas with places to hide like under rocks and plants
The shell of most snails is brown or light brown, which sometimes makes them hard to see on the ground or in the trunks of trees
Snails are hermaphrodites, they have the reproductive organs of both males and females, allowing them to self-fertilize without a sexual partner
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
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Tiger Beetle
Tiger Beetle
Click on the video to learn to draw the tremendous Tiger Beetle!
Click on the video to learn to draw the tremendous Tiger Beetle!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Tiger Beetle!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Tiger Beetle!
They got their name from the voracious eating habits of both the larva and adult phrases of this insect. They feed on other insects that happen to cross their path.
The larvae stay in their tunnel and anchor themselves in the hole with their abdomen and then strike out the hole when their prey pass by. They then bring them into their burrow to consume them.
The adult tiger beetle uses their quick speed and large scissor like mandibles to catch and eat their prey
Many tiger beetles are iridescent in colours - green, blue, orange or scarlett
A variety of tiger beetles can be found in many parts of the world except for Tasmania, Hawaii, Antarctica, and the Maldives
A species in Australia can run at speeds of 9 km/h, which is 125 times its body length per second
Video by: Lisa Cafaro
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Trillium
Trillium
Click on the video to learn to draw the triumphant Trillium!
Click on the video to learn to draw the triumphant Trillium!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Trillium!
Enjoy some neat facts about the Trillium!
A white trillium is the emblem and official flower of Ontario. It was designated the provincial emblem of Ontario in 1937. A white trillium is an official symbol of the Government of Ontario.
They have three broad leaves, three small green sepals, three petals, and a three-sectioned seedpod. Even their name, trillium, refers to this phenomenon.
These plants are extremely long-lived. Trilliums are relatively easy to grow, but slow to develop and spread (not very competitive for space or nutrients). To make up for it, the plants can live for up to 25 years.
A few different names for trilliums: Toadshade (for its resemblance to a toad-sized umbrella), Wakerobin (for its appearance at the same time as robins in the spring), and Birthroot (for its medicinal uses during childbirth).
There are five native trillium species found in Ontario: white, red, painted, drooping and nodding. The most common being the white and red variety.
Trilliums are a favourite food of white-tailed deer, with a preference for white trillium
The red trillium has no nectar and is pollinated by flies and beetles. The petals of the flowers exude an odor that attracts carrion flies and beetles which pollinate the flower.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not illegal to pick a white trillium in Ontario. Picking a trillium flower doesn’t kill the plant but damage can result if the green leaves are taken as it may not be able to collect enough resources to survive the season.
Sources:
http://nativeplantherald.prairienursery.com
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