Ngā Tohu o te Taiao: Signs in Our Environment

You need: thermometer · clear jar or clarity tube · kick net or kitchen sieve · white tray or ice-cream container · spoons and paintbrushes · stream creature picture key · recording sheet

1. Measure the water temperature three times at the same spot and record the average.
2. Fill a clear jar, hold it against white paper and rate the clarity from 1 (can't see through) to 5 (crystal clear).
3. Stand downstream of the net and kick or rub the stones in front of it for one minute. Tip the catch into a tray of stream water.
4. Sort the creatures into sensitive (mayfly, stonefly, cased caddisfly larvae), in-between (freshwater crayfish, some beetles and snails) and tolerant (worms, midge larvae, most snails).
5. Count each group, photograph the tray, then gently return everything to the stream.

How you'll know: Cool, clear water with plenty of sensitive creatures points to a healthy stream. Only tolerant creatures suggests a problem, but check the weather and repeat before deciding.

Safety: An adult at the water at all times. Stay below knee depth, out of fast water and away from the stream after heavy rain. Cover cuts and wash hands afterwards.

Go further: Sample above and below a drain, culvert or cattle crossing, or a shaded and an open stretch, and compare.

You need: 6 plastic cups · trowel · 6 small lids or tiles and stones to raise them · a few dead leaves · white tray · hand lenses · picture key such as Soil Bugs

1. Choose two habitats, for example a mown lawn and a garden bed under shrubs. Set three cups in each, about 2 metres apart.
2. Dig each cup in so its rim is exactly level with the soil. Add a few dead leaves so creatures can hide.
3. Raise a lid above each cup on small stones to keep rain out.
4. Next morning, tip each cup gently into a tray. Count and identify: beetles, spiders, slaters, springtails, ants, wētā.
5. Release everything where you found it, then fill in the holes.

How you'll know: Compare richness (kinds) and abundance (totals) between habitats. More kinds usually means more food and shelter, so link it to what you saw growing there.

Safety: Wear gloves. Never leave traps out for more than one night, and collect them early so creatures don't overheat.

Go further: Repeat on a wet night and a dry night. Does the pattern hold?

You need: large plastic drink bottle cut in half · kitchen sieve or mesh · desk lamp · jar with damp paper towel · leaf litter from under trees · hand lenses or a phone microscope clip

1. Turn the top half of the bottle upside down into the bottom half to make a funnel, with the damp jar at the bottom.
2. Put the mesh in the funnel and add a handful of leaf litter.
3. Shine the lamp 20 cm above the litter for 2–3 hours. As the top dries and warms, small animals move down and fall into the jar.
4. Look with a hand lens. Sort them: decomposers (springtails, mites, slaters, millipedes) and hunters (centipedes, pseudoscorpions, spiders).
5. Return the animals and litter to where they came from.

How you'll know: If you find many decomposers and a few hunters, you are seeing the bottom of a food web: dead leaves → decomposers → small hunters.

Safety: Keep the lamp away from paper and don't touch the hot bulb. Wash hands after handling soil.

Go further: Compare litter from under a native tree with litter from under an exotic tree, using the same amount of litter and the same time.

You need: tracking tunnel (plastic or corflute, or made from a drink carton) · inked tracking card · lure the school approves · footprint guide such as Pest Detective · ruler

1. Set the tunnel flat along a fence line, hedge or garden edge, where animals like to travel.
2. Put a small dab of lure in the middle of the card, then slide the card in.
3. Collect the card next morning. Fold it ink-side in, and write the date, place and tunnel number on the back.
4. Back in class, measure the prints and compare them with the guide: mouse, rat, hedgehog, cat, skink, wētā or insect.
5. Put all tunnels on a map of the school with what each one caught.

How you'll know: Prints on the card show which animals are there, not how many. Repeating over several nights tells you which are common.

Safety: Follow the school's allergy plan: peanut butter is the usual lure, so an adult handles it with gloves, or choose a non-nut lure. Never touch droppings. Wash hands after handling cards.

Go further: Place tunnels in two different habitats and compare the percentage of cards with rat or mouse prints.

You need: quadrat (four 50 cm sticks or a string square) · tape measure · clipboard with a shore key · camera · sunhat and sunscreen

1. Stretch a tape from the top of the shore towards the sea at low tide.
2. Place the quadrat at the high, middle and low zones along the tape.
3. In each quadrat, count animals (barnacles, limpets, pūpū, chitons, mussels) and estimate how much of the square seaweed covers.
4. Measure how long each zone is out of the water (ask your teacher the tide times) and how warm the rock feels.
5. Put back any rock you lift exactly as it was, same side up.

How you'll know: You should see bands: few hardy creatures up high where it dries out, many more kinds lower down. Each band shows which animals can survive drying and heat.

Safety: Go at low tide with adults, watch the waves, never turn your back on the sea, and wear shoes on slippery rocks. Nothing is taken from the shore, and nothing at all in a marine reserve.

Go further: Compare a busy beach where people walk on the rocks with a quieter one. Does trampling change the counts?

You need: thermometer or temperature probe · phone light-meter app or data logger · map of the site · your creature counts

1. Mark five spots on the map, from full sun to deep shade.
2. At each spot measure air temperature, ground or water temperature and light level. Repeat three times.
3. Record in a table with units (°C and lux).
4. Plot light against creature count on a scatter graph.

How you'll know: If the points slope, light or warmth may be linked to where creatures live. Be careful: a link is not proof that one causes the other.

Go further: Measure the same spots at 9 am and 2 pm. Which spot changes most, and which creatures might struggle there?

You need: 1000 grains of rice or lentils · four cups labelled Sun/producer, plant-eater, small hunter, top hunter · string and cards for a food web

1. Start with 1000 grains in the producer cup: that is the energy plants store from sunlight.
2. Pass only one grain in ten to the plant-eater cup (100). The rest is used for living, growing and moving, or lost as heat.
3. Pass one in ten again to the small hunter (10), then to the top hunter (1).
4. Now build a string web with cards for the creatures you found. Pull out one card and see which strings go slack.

How you'll know: You can explain why top predators are rare and why losing one link, such as algae or leaf litter, affects many other living things.

Go further: Add decomposers to your web. Where does their energy come from, and where do the nutrients go?

You need: two identical trays or cut-down milk containers · soil · a square of turf or a layer of leaf litter · watering can · two clear jars · white paper

1. Fill both trays with the same amount of soil. Cover one with turf or litter and leave the other bare.
2. Prop both at the same angle, with a jar at the low end.
3. Pour the same amount of water from the same height over each.
4. Compare the water in each jar against white paper and rate its clarity from 1 to 5. Repeat three times.

How you'll know: Clearer water from the covered tray shows how plants hold soil. Link it to your stream: cloudy water blocks light for algae and clogs the gills of mayfly larvae.

Safety: Do this outside or over a tub, and wash hands after handling soil.

Go further: Try grass, leaf litter and bark. Which holds soil best, and what would that mean for planting along a stream bank?