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Thinking play

Backyard Biodiversity Survey

Child systematically counts and records the living things in one small outdoor patch and analyses what they found.

Cartoon illustration of a parent and child outdoors doing Backyard Biodiversity Survey.
  • Age7 to 12 years
  • Time15 to 30 minutes
  • EnergyModerate
  • CostFree
  • WhereOutdoors
  • Prep5 min

Your child marks off one small patch of outdoor ground, then carefully counts and records every living thing they can find in it, and looks at what the tally shows.

How to do it

  1. Choose one small patch of outdoor ground, roughly a square metre, and mark its edges with string or four stones.
  2. Give your child a recording sheet with space to note each kind of living thing and a tally next to it.
  3. Have them look slowly and systematically, including under leaves and stones, recording each creature or plant with a tally mark rather than picking anything up.
  4. When they finish, help them count up the totals and notice which kind was most common and which was rarest.
  5. Ask what they think explains the pattern, and whether a shadier or sunnier patch might turn up different results.

What you need

  • String
  • Notebook
  • Pencil
  • Magnifying glass

Signs it is working

Your child stays with one patch rather than wandering, and records rather than only exclaiming. They use a tally for repeats instead of recounting. They can name the most and least common thing they found and offer a guess about why

If it is not quite clicking

Child rushes and says there is nothing there: Slow them down by looking together at one small corner first, where there is almost always an ant or a seedling. Child wants to catch or keep creatures: Set the rule that everything stays where it lives and they record instead. Counting feels dull: Turn it into a prediction first by guessing the total before the careful count

Make it yours

Younger (6 to 8 years): Use a smaller patch and just count creatures, skipping plants. Older (10 to 12 years): Survey two different patches and compare the tallies, or repeat the same patch at two times of day. Siblings: Each child surveys their own patch and they compare results at the end

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