I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and has a chance to spend time with family and friends. I’m hoping to get underwater and try out my new dive camera. Keep and eye out for some short dive videos in 2022.
I finished this week with 8 vacation care Christmas programs. We used over 10kgs of bicarb soda, 12L of vinegar, 12L of lemonade and and 6 packs of mentos, having lots of messy science fun.
Try these experiments at home this school holidays
For me Christmas is about using all your senses, the sights and sounds that let me know that it is Summer in Australia. I have had a lot of Christmas Beetles this year and it is always a sign that it is summer and that Christmas is just around the corner. Listen out for the sounds of cicadas and keep an eye out for their exoskeletons on trees, walls, fences and shrubs.
It has been a crazy year filled with change and uncertainty. I want to thank you all for following Australian Environmental Education. Without your help and support during 2021, I would not have been able to achieve so much. Check out the highlights below.
Pollinators drive biodiversity, and over 75% of the world’s flowering plants rely on insect pollinators to reproduce. Australian Pollinator Week highlights the importance of pollinators in your backyard and beyond.
Bees and other insect including flies, beetles, moths, butterflies, wasps, ants are important pollinators. Birds and bats are some of the vertebrate animals that are also pollinators. Pollinators provide important ecosystem services in the natural landscapes as well as within agricultural/horticultural and urban environments.
Australian Pollinator Week acknowledges the important and unique insect pollinators found across Australia. It is a designated week in November during spring when community, business and organisations can come together to raise awareness of the importance of pollinators and support their needs. The world is suffering from major pollinator declines, but you can also help make a difference by encouraging theses animals into your backyard and local area.
Use this great resource ‘Pollinator Insects Identification Tips’ by Wild Pollinator Count to help you identify pollinators around your home.
Attract more wildlife into your backyard, especially pollinating insects by creating a haven for local wildlife. Make an insect hotel to attract more pollinators to your garden. Plant flowering plants and natives to attract more insects into your garden. Reducing chemicals use in your garden will make a more welcoming environment for local wildlife and pollinators.
Find out more with these free resources from Australian Environmental Education
Take part in Australia’s biggest frog count during FrogID Week. Frog ID Week is on between 12 – 21 November. Australia is home to about 240 species of native Amphibians, all of which are frogs. In urban areas, human development has reduced the natural habitat available to frogs. FrogID Week is a great way to learn about frogs living in your backyard.
Peron’s Tree Frog Scientific name:Litoria peronii
Help to record frog calls during FrogID Week using the free app and uncover which frogs live in your backyards, local parks and bushlands. Your recording can help identify changes to local frog populations and inform frog conservation across Australia. Download the free FrogID app today and help us count Australia’s frogs.
This park in the middle of urban Sydney might not look like much, but after a few days of rain the low lying grass area became a Frog Swamp. I could hear the frogs call from 50 metres away, the closer I got the louder there were. I was able to get a great recording for FrogID Week. Listen below to the Common Eastern Froglets Crinia signifera and Striped Marsh Frogs Limnodynastes peronii calling.
Common Eastern Froglet Crinia signifera
Photo: Stephen Mahony
This tiny frog is only 3cm in size and if very commonly heard but rarely seen. They are common and widespread across south-eastern Australia. Their call is a repetitive “crick, crick, crick, crick, crick”.
Striped Marsh FrogLimnodynastes peronii
Photo: Jodi Rowley
This large species of frog is found down the east coast of Australia. Their call is a single, short “tuk” or “whuck” which is repeated every few seconds.
Join me on Tuesday 16 November at 2pm for a FREE live virtual excursion to learn more about Frogs and how you can get involved in FrogID.
If you can’t join me for the Live session you can watch the Fascinating Frogs video to find out more.
You can create a frog friendly garden
Frogs are very sensitive to water loss because their skin is permeable. This also means Frogs are really sensitive to chemicals. Frogs can end up absorbing chemicals that could harm or potentially even kill them. Pesticides can also deplete the frogs’ food source.
You can encourage frogs to come to live and breed in your backyard by creating a frog friendly garden. Create a small shallow pond in an area that is partly shaded or install a Frog Hotel.
Reducing chemicals use in your garden
Creating a Frog Habitat
Be patient and wait, if you build it they will come
Use FrogID to research the frogs that are found in you local area. This will help you work out what kind of habitat will suit your backyard best.
You can use PVC pipe to create a habitat for tree frogs. Frog Tubes are an easy way to provide somewhere safe for tree frogs to live too. Use a 1 metre length of PVC pipe and stick the base in the ground to tie them to a tree. It provides a really moist environment for tree frogs to hide in.
A Frog Hotel is a great option for tree frogs and provide them a safe place to hide during the day. Check out the video below for step by step instructions on how ro make a Frog Hotel.
Discover more about Frogs and some of their amazing adaptions. There are also lots of information to create a frog friendly backyard in your area.
This week has been an incredible marine world adventure, above and below the water. I started the week with a Marvellous Marine Life virtual excursion in the morning, followed by a night snorkel at Shelly Beach Manly. On Tuesday I presented a special live streamed event, Under the Sea for Children’s Week. Wednesday morning I had an amazing scuba dive at Clifton Gardens. My marine world adventure concluded with another Marvellous Marine Life virtual excursion.
I love sharing my underwater advenures and have been delivering virtual excursions for students for many years. This years has had it’s challenges as I wasn’t able to get to the water due to months of lockdown. One thing that kept me going was being able to share my marine adventures and stories with students across Australia.
We had word that over the weekend there was a lot of bioluminescence in the water at Manly. My sister and I thought it was time for a night snorkel to experience the bioluminescence. It is an amazing experience being in the water, you see flashes of light when you move your hand quickly through the water.
Bioluminescence is light produced as a result of a chemical reaction in animals. Some animals make the necessary chemicals themselves, some absorb them from their food and others allow bioluminescent organisms to live inside them forming a symbiotic relationship.
It was great to get back in the water this week and after the bioluminescence, I wasn’t sure what could top it. Well, a nice shore dive at Clifton Gardens definitely was the answer. We were greeted by a massive stingray, that was doing laps checking up on us. The visibility wasn’t great but we discovered so many seahorses camouflaging against the pylons of the wharf and the nets around the pool. There were lots cuttlefish, one of my favourite animals. We also saw a couple of huge pufferfish swimming around too. It was a great way to get back in the water after so long.
You can check out the recording of the Under the Sea program for Children’s Week.
You can find out more about the Marvellous Marine Life incursions and virtual excursions.
National Water Week aims to build awareness around the value of water. Access to clean water is hugely important to our daily lives, and it’s down to all of us to protect our water environments and resources, and use water wisely.
What is Water?
Water is essential for all life and is the most abundant substance on Earth. Water covers 75% of the earth’s surface, however only a very small amount is freshwater that can be used directly by people, animals and plants. This issue with the available freshwater creates competing pressures for our water resources.
Follow the journey of water down the river through the catchment to the sea. Think about the different land uses in your local catchment and the variety of impacts they have on our precious water resources.
Education resources
Australian Environmental Education has a range education resources to help you teach about the importance of water.
Water moves through the environment by the Water Cycle. This activity investigates the journey of a river through the catchment. Follow water through the environment and explore the changes to water quality over time. This learning activity is the first part of a sequence of 5 individual learning activities focused on Catchment Management.
Sometimes you just need to slow down and connect with nature. Sit under your favourite tree or go for a walk in the park. This is especially important at the moment to give yourself permission to have a break. Take some time out every day for you, even 5 minutes can make a difference.
A view through the trees
Remember to look up and change your perspective
Touch and feel different tree bark
Visit your favourite tree, if you don't have one, find one
Don't forget to use all your senses
I recently had a wonderful and restorative online Forest Therapy session with Mary Bell from Nature Knows. It was great to take some time to connect with the environment around me and appreciate the sights, sounds and smells in my backyard. Along my journey I discovered these animals in my garden. I wouldn’t have spotted them if it wasn’t for the activities in the Forest Therapy session.
I have continued with the lessons learned during the session and have been giving myself permisison to take a break and spend more time outside. I have been going on more walks, listening to the sounds of the birds and recording frog calls for Frog ID. It is great to discover some of the wildlife that we share our environment with. Spending more time outside and slowing down has allowed my to connect with nature and capture some amazing images of these animals.
Exploring my backyard and local area have been a wonderful chance to slow down and connect with nature.
Discover What’s in your Backyard this school holidays. With the weather warming up it is the perfect time to explore your own backyard and local area. Australian Environmental Education has a range of FREE programs to keep your kids busy during the school holidays.
FREE YouTube LIVE event
From backyards to bushland there is a variety of animals living near you. Learn to identify animals from the clues that they leave behind and discover the diversity of animals in your local area.
Children will the meet live Stick Insects and a live Green Tree Frog
More resources to help you explore
The What’s in your Backyard resources are designed to help you explore the amazing wildlife in your local area. Look for the clues that are left behind to discover more about these animals and what you can do to protect them.
Australia is home to about 240 species of native Amphibians, all of which are frogs. In urban areas, human development has reduced the natural habitat available to frogs. The Focus on Frogs video provides information and skills that will enable you and your child to discover what frogs live in your backyard or local area.
Minibeasts in your Garden explores the diverse world of minibeasts. Discover why minibeasts are important and learn how find them in your garden or local park. The video and activities will help you to identify common groups of backyard minibeasts and provides information and skills to conduct your own minibeasts investigation.
You don’t see many of the animals that live in your local area because they are nocturnal. Often it is the Noises in the Night that give us a clue to the nocturnal species that are living in our local area. Other times it is the Scats, Track or Traces that animals leave behind that help us discover who is living in our backyard.
Check out these fun and educational science experiments. Create some amazing school holiday fun using some simple household ingredients. You and your kids will have lots of science fun extracting DNA from stawberries, making red cabbage indicactor or making a sugar snake.
Threatened Species Day is commemorated across the Australia on 7 September every year to raise awareness of plants and animals at risk of extinction. Threatened Species Day acknowledges the death of the last remaining Thylacine, Tasmanian tiger at Hobart Zoo in 1936. It is a day to reflect on what you can do to make a difference.
Tasmanian Devil
Australia is home to more than 500,000 animal and plant species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. Over the last 200 years, more than 100 animal and plant species have become extinct. In NSW there are almost 1000 animal and plant species at risk of extinction.
Threatened Species Day is a time to focus on or native plants, animals, and ecosystems and look at how we can protect them into the future. I have a range of resources available to help you deliver programs for Threatened Species Day on the following topic areas.
There are also a range of live and on demand virtual excursions available. Join me to talk about Threatened Species with these live interactive session. Discover some amazing animals only found in Australia. Students will also find out what they can do to protect them.
Australia is home to about 240 species of native Amphibians, all of which are frogs. In urban areas, human development has reduced the natural habitat available to frogs. The Focus on Frogs workshop provides information and skills that will enable you and your child to discover what frogs live in your backyard or local area.
Minibeasts in your Garden
Minibeasts in your Garden explores the diverse world of minibeasts. Discover why minibeasts are important and learn how find them in your garden or local park. The program will help you to identify common groups of backyard minibeasts and provides information and skills to conduct your own minibeasts investigation.
This Threatened Species Day marks the second anniversary of the creation of Australian Environmental Education. The last two years have been full of many challenges and just as many rewarding experiences.
In the last 2 years I have written almost 150 webpages and 60 blog posts. I have really enjoyed creating all the content for the website and to see the information being used by so many people. There have been over 65,000 visitors viewing 120,000 pages and 4 million impressions on Google.
The What’s in your Backyard series of videos on YouTube have been watched almost 10,000 times. These videos are especially popular at the moment with students learning from home.
Water moves through the environment by the Water Cycle. This activity investigates the journey of a river through the catchment. Follow water through the environment and explore the changes to water quality over time. This learning activity is the first part of a sequence of 5 individual learning activities focused on Catchment Management.
Our coasts are impacted by our actions on land. Rubbish and microplastics can be found washed up on almost every Australian beach. These are great activities to do with your high school students.
The Beach Survey provides a starting point to understand the types of rubbish in the marine environment.
I have also been delivering onsite and online programs to schools, vacation care centres and students learning from home. Combined, I have delivered almost 250 program reaching over 20,000 students. I’m looking forward to what the next 12 months brings and can’t wait to be able to deliver onsite programs again.
Get ready for National Science Week with a range of online earth and environmental science programs. These programs are suitable for students in the classroom or learning from home. It doesn’t matter if you are a teacher or parent there is a program perfect for you.
Class Programs
My Journey Beneath the Waves
My Journey Beneath the Waves: Diving Sydney’s Rocky Reefs takes you and your students on an exploration of the marine environment. The temperate waters around Sydney are home to a variety of habitats including kelp beds and sponge gardens. These are wonderful place to dive and discover the diversity of animals that live there.
What’s in your Backyard: discover some of the amazing animals that live in your backyard. Explores the diversity of animals that lives in your local area by looking for the clues that are left behind. Students will look at local animals and find out what they can do to protect them.
Take a journey back in time to the beginning of the Earth 4.6 Billion Years ago. We will explore the changes to the earth over that time and the evolution of life. This journey focuses on the diversity of Australian animals that are found nowhere else in the world.
Outschool is an innovative education platform that offers a variety of engaging, small-group classes online. Unlike traditional classes, Outschool classes give kids the unique opportunity to explore their interests in-depth via interactive, live video by experienced, independent educators.
Marvellous Marine Life
Explore the amazing diversity of animals with the Marvellous Marine Life workshop. Take a journey beneath the waves to explore this wonderful world. Learn about some of these incredible animals, their adaptions and habitats.
Invertebrate Investigations explores the diverse world of invertebrates. Discover why invertebrates are important and learn how investigate the invertebrates in your own backyard.
Take a journey through time to discover some of Australia’s ancient animals. Become a Palaeontologist and look at real fossils to find out about the animals that called Australia home.
