Great Bug Hunt winners announced

The winners of this year’s Great Bug Hunt competition have been announced.

The Association for Science Education’s learning resource site schoolscience.co.uk teamed up for a second year with The Bug Man Martin Rapley to take science learning out of the classroom and bring it to life in the outdoors.

Primary school children taking part in the competition spent their time exploring habitats before recording their observations in drawings, photos and poems.

Marianne Cutler, ASE’s Director of Professional and Curriculum Innovation, said: “The Great Bug Hunt competition is a brilliant way of bringing science to life for children and shows you can go on a journey of discovery in your own backyard.

“Not only does the competition do a great job of capturing children’s imagination, it also fits in well with the science curriculum.

“Using the natural environment when teaching is an important part of science education and something the ASE strongly advocates through its Outdoor Science Working Group.”

Gwenfô Church Primary School in Wales won the top prize, a bug day at the school on July 13, where they get to come close up with creepy crawlies such as scorpions and tarantulas.

In second place, Bentley West Primary School in Walsall won a wildlife identification pack and Kinson Primary School in Bournemouth came third, winning three terrariums. Ten runners up won The Bug Man's Guide to Big Bugs book by Martin Rapley.

Gwenfô Church Primary School used the bug hunt theme for their annual science week.

The school’s Science Co-ordinator Jen Ford said:  “We went to the school grounds and some of the habitats in the immediate vicinity. During the week each class looked for bugs in a different habitat.

“By the end of the week, we had looked in seven different habitats, the meadow, vegetable garden, the forest schools area, the church yard, the orchard field and the village pond and stream.”

“We found over 40 different types of bugs and had a fantastic time.”

A prize was also awarded by the The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council for the best photographic entry as chosen by their entomologists, Ian Bedford, Gavin Hatt and Anna Jordan.

The winning photo (pictured top), taken by 9-year-old Ben at Kinson Primary School in Bournemouth, captured a thriving red ant mound at the back of the school field. A selection of real life arthropod specimens and an Introduction to Minibeasts teaching set from Bug Club for Schools were awarded for the winning photo.

A photo of a ladybird (pictured second, above) and a damselfly (pictured right) came second and third and were taken by pupils at Kinson Primary School and Gwenfô Church Primary School respectively.

Maria Buchanan, a teacher at Kinson Primary School, said: “The children have thoroughly enjoyed The Great Bug Hunt and were enthralled with the diversity of bugs they found.

“They were able to use the experience to further their knowledge of habitats and organisms around them.

“They are now all thoroughly immersed in the world of bugs and are still keen to find even more bugs in our school grounds.

“It also gave them a great understanding of how to handle and look after creatures in their care and we are going to use our terrariums to keep even more bugs to study. “

“Thank you to everyone at The Great Bug Hunt and we can’t wait to enter again next year.”