Sarah West

The new OPAL survey, Bugs Count, is proving to be very popular. We've just had over 200,000 bug sightings to our website, which is a great start! A lot of teachers, both formal and informal, are using the surveys to encourage their students to look closer at the natural world around them. The survey pack (download from http://www.opalexplorenature.org/bugscount or contact your regional OPAL team to see if they've got any physical packs left to send out) is brilliant and contains everything you need to do the survey, but it's sometimes useful to give pupils some background information about minibeasts before they do the survey, or to do some work afterwards to reinforce their learning. So, I thought I'd share with you a fantastic resource I've found on the internet. It's ClipArtETC: Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse (long name, great website). The images below are taken from it:

There are also pictures of plants, architecture, mythology, maths etc etc. They are mainly from out of print books. They can be downloaded and used free of charge, although they do limit it to 50 per project and it has to be for educational purposes.

Anyway, I think it's a great resource, hope you find it useful.