Life Cycles
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
  • To learn how puffins and other seabirds reproduce.
  • To be able to identify basic changes in growth and development of different species of seabird from birth to full adulthood.
  • To be able to describe how adult seabirds care for and support their young chicks.
  • To describe the life cycle of different species of seabirds.

ICT
  • Use a painting program (i.e.2Paint) to create and colour in your own seabird.
  • Choose a seabird and design your ownseabird mask.
  • Write and illustrate your own story about a pufflings journey to the sea.
  • Create life cycle diagram for a chosen seabird.
/ LINKS
PHSE
Literacy
Art
Science
Numeracy / VOCABULARY
Fledging, chick, predator, prey, diet, egg, feeding, parenting, nest, fish larvae, incubation, flapping, egg tooth, breeding
ACTIVITIES
  • Visit the project website. Design a calendar to record the breeding season of different seabirds on Alderney mention incubation period, hatching and fledging.
  • Brainstorm and create a “mind map” to illustrate how different seabirds care for their young.
  • Look at photographs of baby pufflings. Create a glossary of words that accurately describe the appearance of a young puffling. Now use these words to create your own acrostic poem titled “Puffling.”
  • Read the stories “Puffling” by Margaret Wild and “Night of the Puffins” by Bruce McMillan. Draft and write your own story about a puffling leaving the nest for the first time?
  • Compare the number of eggs each seabird lays each year.
  • What is the incubation period for different seabirds?
(Find out)
  • What colour isa puffin egg?
  • How many days will the average puffling spend in the nest?
  • What do the adults feed the baby puffling chick?
  • How many times a day is the baby puffling chick fed?
  • When does the baby puffling leave the burrow?
  • Which birds and animals present a danger to young pufflings?
/ RESOURCES
Photographs of Seabirds
Night on the Puffling –online activities

Pufflings – Margaret Ward (Teacher’s Notes PDF)

Pufflings – National Geographic

Puffin feeding a chick

How to draw a puffling!
POSSIBLE INVESTIGATIONS
  • Compare the populations of seabirds on Alderney. Why are some increasing while others are decreasing? Join us for this week’s video conference to help investigate this question.

NC Outcomes:
Key Stage 1 / Pupils should:
  • Notice that seabirds have offspring which grow into adults
  • Find out about and describe the basic needs of seabirds for survival
  • Identify and classify different species of seabirds by their different features and life cycles.

Key Stage 2 / Pupils should:
  • Describe the differences in the life cycles of a seabird
  • Describe the life process of reproduction in different seabirds
  • Describe the changes seabirds age
  • Describe how Seabirds are classified into groups according to common observable characteristics and based on similarities and differences.