Hi Bulb Buddies,

Thank you for all of your hard work on the Spring Bulbs for Schools project.

Please check your data entries and flower records this week to ensure that they are all correct and up to date. I will analyse the results over the holidays and will announce the winners and prizes on 28th April. The certificates and prizes will be sent out by 15th May. The report will be sent out the week of 15th May.
 

 
All schools with complete weather and flower records will have a chance of winning a nature activity trip for their class! In previous years we have drawn winners for England, Scotland and Wales from a hat.

Runners-up and high achieving schools will receive sunflower seeds.

All schools that have entered regular weather data and flower records will receive Supper Scientist certificates and pencils.

Applications for next year are now open!

Applications are on a first come first serve basis. Please read the form carefully.

Schools in Wales                                         Schools in England and Scotland

The Edina Trust are opening their applications to schools in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil and Conwy. If your school is located in one of these areas and you would like to take part in the Edina Extension project please read the details here.

Thank you for all of your hard work Bulb Buddies!

Your Comments:

Professor Plant: I'm sorry if some of you were disappointed because your plant didn't grow or didn't produce a flower. This happens sometimes and is down to pot luck, so please don't think that you have done anything wrong. There are guidelines on the website about how to prepare your bulbs for re-planting next year. And if your school has entered complete weather records you will be receiving Sunflower seeds in May. Thank you for taking part in the project Bulb Buddies! 

Weather comments:

Rougemont Junior School: Last week, signing off Professor Plant.

Our Lady of Peace Primary School: We are very sad that this week is the last week of the competition. We really enjoyed it.

Garstang St. Thomas' CE Primary School: Have a lovely Easter Professor! Hope we have helped with your investigation.

Barmston Village Primary School: It's the last week 👍 I hope we win ⚡️⭐️🌟🌙 if we do your the best🔥

Garstang St. Thomas' CE Primary School: wet and warm like the teacher's tea.

Arkholme CE Primary School: This week was very warm. The mystery bulbs have now flowered and there are about two daffodils that have not quite come out yet. We did not get a lot of rainfall due to the nice sun.

Broad Haven Primary School: The last week for our data and we have only missed 2 INSET days and half term when we were not in school . Our mystery bulb flowered on March 27th it is a lovely red tulip Thank you agian for letting us join the project we have enjoyed it. Hope we can join again next year!!

Carnbroe Primary School: It has been mixed weather this week sometimes cold but mostly we can feel it becoming warmer. All our daffodils finally flowered. Some children were disappointed because their crocus did not flower. We are taking our plants home with us. Have a good Easter and thank you for including us in your project.

Carnbroe Primary School: We had mixed weather last week and many of our daffodils have not flowered, yet! It snowed on Tuesday and we sent Professor Bulb photographs of our daffodils and crocus in the snow. By lunchtime the sun was out and had evaporated all the snow. We decided these flowers must be really hardy to survive in the cold.

Stanford in the Vale Primary School: It's been a cold windy week! We cannot believe spring is coming .The clocks go forward this week, looking forward to lighter evenings.

Broad Haven Primary School: The weather is getting better we have been to our beach to do a marine litter pick this week. We have tidied our garden ready to plant vegetables.

Flower comments:

Ysgol Glanyfferi: Sadly all of the crocuses have died but some are fighting for their lives

Ysgol Borth y Gest: On Monday two tulips plants appeared. We were all surprised!!!!!!
We have daffodils, crocus and tulips. They look beautiful.

Ysgol Deganwy: Everyone is taking their plant home today

Darran Park Primary: Another 9 have flowered the remainder have no flowers at all.

Darran Park Primary: 12 more crocuses have flowered.

Darran Park Primary: The remainder of the daffodil bulbs have flowered, we have a total 40 flowers together.

Darran Park Primary: All of our daffodil bulbs have flowered, but we are still waiting for our mystery bulbs to flower.

Tonyrefail Primary School: Unfortunately a bug eat some of my plant

Tonyrefail Primary School: Thank you for the bulbs they are good.

Usworth Colliery Primary School: All have grown but no flowers at all as of 30th March.

Rougemont Junior School: Pretty colour

Rougemont Junior School: A small daffodil, did it have too much shade?

Rougemont Junior School: A very tall daffodil, I looked after it well.

Rougemont Junior School: Daffodils are tricky to measure.

Rougemont Junior School: Beautiful!

Wormit Primary School: Very good daffodil :^) !

Arkholme CE Primary School: Our bulbs have flowered including the daffodils and the crocus; and brought them home for mother’s day as a gift. But some of the crocuses are starting to die.

Bellyeoman Primary School: Has lots of leaves but no flower yet.

Broad Haven Primary School: Our daffodils look lovely in their pots and we can see other signs of Spring around our school

Tonyrefail Primary School: My daffodil grew taller than I thought.

Ysgol Deganwy: All of the plants are fully grown.

Hi Bulb Buddies,

We’ve had lots of flower records in! Spring is truly here.

The results so far give us an average flowering date for the Crocus of 3^rd March, and an average flowering date for the Daffodil of 8^th March.

Last year the average flowering date for the Crocus was 10^th March and the average flowering date for the Daffodil was 15^th March. So the flower data entries shared so far indicate that our plants have flowered earlier this year than last year!

The graphs on the right show the results so far for temperature, rainfall and sunlight hours compared with last year. From these we can see that although the average temperatures were much lower October-January, there was a sharp increase in February with temperatures exceeding those of the previous year. We can also see that although rainfall was much lower, sunlight hours were higher for the October-January period than they were the previous year. It’s likely that a warm February and high sunlight hours resulted in our bulbs flowering slightly earlier this spring!

Thank you for all your lovely comments Bulb Buddies. I’m glad to hear that you are enjoying the project. Keep up the good work!

Professor Plant

Your comments:

Weather comments:

Ysgol Pentrefoelas: Mae hi wedi bob yn andros o sych. Ryden ni wedi bob allan yn chwarae bob dydd.

Carnbroe Primary School: It rained most days but it was not too cold. On Monday and Thursday the sun was out and the sky was blue, it felt like Spring. Still no signs of our bulbs flowering. Maybe next week.

Ysgol Glanyfferi: It is starting to feel like spring.

Arkholme CE Primary School: Our first crocus bulb has flowered and is looking good and healthy. We have also moved the plant pots into the sunlight so hopefully they will flower too. The daffodils from last year have grown also the weather has been improving and there has been more sunlight.

Broad Haven Primary School: The garden is looking lovely with the pots of crocus and daffodils flowering. On Thursday the temperature got up to 15.5 at lunchtime. Today (Friday) the sun has come out this afternoon. The children are very excited because their bulbs from last year which we planted in the bank are now starting to flower.

Stanford in the Vale Primary School: Hello, this week it has been cold and hot and it has been a really good week because we have had a delivery of two new trolleys and we even invested in a wormery which is a big hit with our foundation friends.

Flower comments:

Ysgol Pentrefoelas: Fy mlodyn yw y cyntaf I agor y flwyddyn hon,ond y llynedd nath o ddim agor o gwbwl.

Ysgol Pentrefoelas: blwyddyn dwytha mi ddaru y cenin pedr flodeuo ar y 21ain o Fawrth, 2016.

New Monkland Primary School: We noticed that our crocus plants started to grow slightly later than our daffodils. We were so excited to see them growing in our plant pots.

Ysgol Deganwy: All of them of grown and most people have taken them home.

New Monkland Primary School: We were so excited to see our plants starting to grow and the class enjoyed getting to see the Daffodil in their plant pots.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I like that it’s blue not purple.

Beulah School: :):D All of our flowers have flowered except one :( :P
We have enjoyed our project :D ;)

Carbrain Primary School: We have flowers. :)

Carnbroe Primary School: My daffodil opened on the Friday and it has a small flower.

Severn Primary: I like it cos it is little and cute.

Severn Primary: Sadly a football hit my daffodil and it fell off.

Severn Primary: When I saw my flower it was so beautiful and I was happy.

Severn Primary: I like it cos the colour yellow is bright and the colour of the sun.

Severn Primary: It was a long time you af to wait a long time to open the daffodil.

Severn Primary: For some reason my flower never grew.

Severn Primary: Thank you for the spring bulb project.

Ellel St John's CE Primary School: We think that the crocuses have been water logged because when we went to measure them they were all floppy and droopy.

St. Michael's Primary School: The daffodil has not produced a flower.

Carnbroe Primary School: It rained lots this week but we checked on our flowering bulbs every day. Many of our bulbs in the pots flowered. The daffodils and crocus in the ground also flowered, hooray!

Auchenlodment Primary School: Nearly all of our crocuses have opened, we're now excitedly waiting for our daffodils to bloom.

Our Lady of Peace Primary School: When we go out it is fun and when it is raining we get soaked.

Our Lady of Peace Primary School:  It was fun planting the flowers. I like Daffodil.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I enjoyed looking after it and watching it grow.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I enjoyed the whole experience

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I enjoyed planting it and taking it home.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I liked watching the stages of growth.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I had fun taking part.

Barmston Village Primary School: My doffodil is quite small but the flower is beautiful.

Barmston Village Primary School: My daffodil is very tall compared to some of the others.

Barmston Village Primary School: My daffodil is smaller than some others but I think my sign might have been in the way of the sun getting to the plant.

Barmston Village Primary School: We've noticed the crocuses have a different flower to the ones we planted in our village last year. Your crocuses have smaller pointier leaves than ours.

Barmston Village Primary School: My daffodil is only small and my crocus didn't grow. I wonder if I didn't plant my correctly.

Ellel St John's CE Primary School: We had 15 crocus' were open on Wednesday but when we checked on Friday there were 27 crocus'.

Ellel St John's CE Primary School: 8 of our daffodils are open and the tallest of them (When we measured them on Monday) was 250mm.

Broad Haven Primary School: We are delighted we have our crocus and daffodils flowering. But it was very rainy on Thursday.

Broad Haven Primary School: We have the double- first crocus and first daffodil!! The bulbs from last year’s project are now flowering in the bank by our garden.

Broad Haven Primary School: Yes ours flowered first. A purple crocus.

Ysgol Deganwy: all of the flowers have budded.

Hello Bulb Buddies,

Thank you to all schools who have already entered their flower data! Remember to make sure the dates entered are correct and that the height has been entered in millimetres! We have had a few flowers reported for April and lots of very short crocus and daffodils!

If you spot that your entries need amending, just re-enter them to the website with a comment to explain that the new entry is to replace a previous one.

I have enjoyed reading the comments that have been sent with the weather and flower data over the last fortnight! I’ve attached some of these below. An interesting question was raised by Stanford in the Vale Primary, who asked whether they need to enter multiple flower records if the height and flowering date are the same in each? It is still important to enter this flower data, as the number of flowers at a particular height and particular date will impact on the overall averages for the project.

To work out your schools average/mean flowering height for the crocus and daffodil, add all of your crocus or daffodil heights together and divide by the number of entries for that flower.

If you have one flower at 200mm and one at 350mm the mean would be 275mm. If you have one flower at 200mm and ten flowers at 350mm your mean flower height would be 341mm. This is why it is important that you enter all of your flower records.

Every flower record is important and impacts on the overall results. If your plant hasn’t grown by 31^st March, please send in a flower record without a date or height and explain this in the comment section. If your plant has grown but hasn’t produced a flower by 31^st March please enter the height without a date and explain this in the comments section.

Keep the questions coming Bulb Buddies! There are resources and activities on the website to help you. Once your plant has flowered, why not draw it and label the different parts of the plant? I would love to see photos of your drawings and will post any that are sent in on my next Blog!

Keep up the good work Bulb Buddies!

Professor Plant

Your comments:

We’ve had lots of lovely comments about your plants, sent in with both weather and flower data:

Ysgol Y Wern: Mae'r bylbiau i gyd wedi egnio ac mae sawl blodyn crocws i'w weld!! Mae'r bylbiau ddirgel yn edrych yn diddorol iawn gyda streipiau ar y ddail!

Ysgol Pennant: Mi roedd yn hwyl iawn i tyfu crocws a i weld o.

Stanford in the Vale Primary School: 17 daffodils have all flowered on the same day! Do we still have to enter individual flowers? They all measure the same height! Regards R.

Professor Plant: Hi Stanford in the Vale, I’ve answered your question in detail above as it was the star comment this week! It’s a very good question, but all of the individual flower records are important and can help us to create a bigger picture of the results! I have a special task for you this week, why not work out your school’s average flowering date for this year and last year, and let me know whether your plants flowered earlier or later on average this year! There’s a fun game on BBC Bitesize to help you with Mode, Median, Mean and Range! http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/maths/data/mode_median_mean_range/play/

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I am so glad my bulb has flowered.

St Mary's Primary School: Our first crocus flower has opened. We are all really excited.

Ellel St John's CE Primary School: They've grown quite quickly and are just opening.

Stanford in the Vale Primary School: We will send photographs later today. The crocus have a beautiful radiant deep purple colour.

Rougemont Junior School: Our Crocus are flowering and our Daffodils are growing well. We hope it will be sunny tomorrow. I think we are in luck!!!

Tonyrefail Primary School: Hi Professor Plant most of our plants have grown. We are measuring them. Nine of are crocuses have flowered.

Garstang St. Thomas' CE Primary School: We had a couple of frosty mornings this week but our crocus plants are still flowering and all our daffodils have buds on them now.

Beulah School: A lot of crocuses have flowered but none of the daffodils have yet.

Boston West Academy: 2 daffodils have grown

Ysgol Deganwy: all of the plants came out the soil yay!

Rougemont Junior School: our crocus is growing well but needs sunshine and warmth to open its flowers.

Barmston Village Primary School: The bulbs are starting to grow!

Loch Primary School: The plants have grown quite a lot!

Ysgol Deganwy: All of the bulbs have come up from the soil.

Broad Haven Primary School: Our daffodils and crocus now have leaves but no flowers yet.

Loch Primary School: We are happy to see our plants growing!

Tonyrefail Primary School: Our Crocuses have also started to grow.

Garstang St. Thomas' CE Primary School: We were back into school on Tuesday. We had a surprise as J's crocus had blossomed and a lot of us have noticed our plants have grown buds so we are all on stand-by to record our blooms too. Storm Doris came on Thursday so we didn't catch all the rain as most of it was sideways! Luckily none of our bulb pots were blown over.

Professor Plant: Fantastic Bulb Buddies, I'm glad to hear you are watching your plants so carefully! Don't worry about sideways rain as the rain gauge is designed to collect a sample of rainfall. Keep up the good work Bulb Buddies!

We’ve had lots of insightful comments about the weather, and many of you commented on storm Doris. More information on storm Doris can be found here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/barometer/uk-storm-centre/storm-doris

St Robert's R.C Primary School: Storm Doris wedi chwythu y brigau oddiar y coed ar dydd iau.

Ysgol Pentrefoelas: Yn wlyb iawn ar Dydd Llyn ond wedyn yn mynd yn sych.

Ysgol Y Wern: Oer iawn, iawn wythnos yma. Wedi bwrw eira ar ddydd Gwener.

Carnbroe Primary School: We had lots of rain on Tuesday and we were slipping about the garden while we were checking on our plants. Still no flowering yet. Nearly everyone's bulb has begun to show shoots. C's bulb has not come through the soil yet.

Professor Plant: Ooo be careful if the ground is slippery Bulb Buddies! I hope C’s plants grow, but if they haven’t grown by 31^st March please let me know by entering a flower record but leaving the date and height blank. It’s as important to record this as it is flower records!

Stanford in the Vale Primary School: Hello, this week has been quite chilly and on Monday it was icy. It has been rainy to. Bye Bye.

Rougemont Junior School: It's going well. Hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow.

Arkholme CE Primary School: This week the Temperature has gone down quite a bit on Thursday. And there was not a lot of rain on Friday and Wednesday are bulbs are starting to grow so we are quite pleased. Thank you very much.

Garstang St. Thomas' CE Primary School: It’s been getting colder this week but our bulbs are still growing.

Darran Park Primary: The temperature has been quite consistent over the week. There has been a drop in the amount of rainfall this week.

Henllys CIW Primary: It has been snowy a little bit this morning.

Staining C of E Primary School: There has not been much rain during the second part of the week. It has been a bit warmer as well. There was some rain on Monday and Tuesday.

Arkholme CE Primary School: This week was a very dull and wet week. There was a little bit of growth from the bulbs that we planted. It was also a very cold week on Friday the sun came out and the temperature rised. Best wishes.

Stanford in the Vale Primary School: Hello, On monday it was teacher training day so we couldn't record it. But this week it has been hot and cold. On Thursday we had storm Doris so it was very cold. Bye,bye.

Ysgol Rhostyllen: This is fun.

Our Lady of Peace Primary School: I liked doing the temperature because it was fun.

Broad Haven Primary School: Yr 5 are in LLangrannog this week so we are recording the weather. Rain and gales at the end of the week.

Professor Plant: Thank you for filling in Bulb Buddies, I hope you enjoyed the project! Good work.

Hi Bulb buddies,

I hope you had a lovely half term. We’ve had our first flower records in! Spring is really on the way now, with flowers in bloom! Please send in photos of your plants, your weather stations and any signs of spring!

I want to let you know about new teaching resources being launched through People’s Collection Wales. Peoples Collection Wales is a project and website funded by the Welsh Government and run in partnership between National Museum Wales, The National Library and The Royal Commission. The website is a platform for documenting the history of Wales and Welsh people. The site is a public resource, to which anyone can contribute, resulting in new items and previously unheard stories being shared for the first time.

The new Learn pages cater for teachers, providing clear guidelines on how to utilise the website to support the emerging Digital Competence Framework (DCF). There are help pages offering additional support around copyright, metadata and DCF. There are numerous ready-to-go teaching packs focussed on subjects that support the Welsh Curriculum. The extensive materials available for research enable different levels of engagement with the site, and the variety of media utilised ensures the content is varied and engaging.

Contributors to the site vary from Museums and National archives uploading their digitised collections, to individuals uploading their family histories and schools sharing projects they have produced in class.

The website itself is a fantastic resource for schools, and has been utilised to support of a variety of class projects. Here are some ideas on how your class could develop digital skills through utilising this site:

• Use the site to research topics such as local history or famous Welsh people.
• Create a profile so that your class can showcase their work by creating favourite lists and uploading items to create collections, stories and trails.
• Upload your own teaching resources or learning plans to make the material available to others.
• Explore the learn pages for innovative and engaging teaching resources that utilise the online material.
• Check in to see what other schools have produced and be inspired.

Read our guidelines for approaching the Digital Competency Framework, and how engagement in the above activities meets this criteria.

Be inventive, there are a wealth of innovative ways to embrace digital media in the classroom. Let your class take the lead and put the material available on Peoples Collection Wales through its paces. There’s so much opportunity to be creative, and we’re excited to see what you come up with!

Training and support is available, please contact a member of the team if you’d like additional support or would like to suggest a collaborative project with Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales.

Llanharan Primary, who have participated in the Spring Bulbs for Schools Project since 2014, have produced a fantastic audio trail of their local area: https://www.peoplescollection.wales/collections/384915

Keep up the good work Bulb Buddies!

Professor Plant

Hello Bulb Buddies,

An exciting number of schools have reported that their Daffodil and Crocus plants are growing. Some schools have noted that their plants look close to flowering. With that in mind it is a good time to discuss the next part of the project –  flower records! There is a resource on the Spring Bulbs for Schools website entitled ‘keeping flower records’. This document tells you how to keep flower records, the equipment you must use and the methods for collecting information.

The resource pack sent to your school in October contained a Crocus flowering chart and a Daffodil flowering chart. You can use these to record the dates that your flowers open and the height of your plants on these dates. You can then enter your flowering date and the height of your plant on this date to the National Museum Wales website. Once the first flowering date has been entered for your school, a flower will appear on the map on the Museum website to show where your school is!

Last year some schools were confused and entered the height of their flowers weekly. You can monitor how tall your plants are growing each week and let me know in the ‘comments’ section when you enter your weekly weather records. But, the ‘flowering date’ and the height of your plant on the day it flowers are to be entered on the NMW website only once the flower has opened. 

Look at the picture of Daffodils at St Fagans National History Museum. This picture was taken on a cold day, so the flowers haven’t fully opened. But you can still tell which ones have flowered by looking closely at the picture. If you can clearly see all of the petals then your plant has flowered. Before flowering the petals are held tight in a protective casing. 

The picture to the right shows a flower bud. Once the flower has matured inside the bud (and the weather is warm enough) the casing will begin to open. This can take a few hours or a few days! If you watch your plants carefully you might see this happening! Once you can see all of your petals and the casing isn’t restricting them at all you can measure the flowers height and enter your findings on the website.

Have you compared the heights of the flowers in your class? Are there big differences in the size and maturity of the plants, or are they all very similar? What about the plants planted in the ground? Are these any bigger than the ones in your plant pots? Why do you think this is? You can let me know your thoughts in the ‘comments’ section when you enter your weekly weather records!

Once the bulbs start to grow send your stories and pictures to our bulb-blog and follow Professor Plant on Twitter! 

Keep up the good work Bulb Buddies!

Thank you for updating me on how your plants are doing Bulb Buddies:

Ysgol Deganwy: Most of the plants have started to grow.

Henllys CIW Primary: About all the bulbs have sprouted.

Ysgol Pentrefoelas: Dim glaw. Braf efo awyr goch bob nos a bob bore! Deilen 3 Cenin wedi dod i'r golwg yn y potiau. Wedi bod yn gynnes a phawb yn chwarae "British Buldogs" bob dydd heb gotiau!

Carnbroe Primary School: The week started off really cold and frosty but as the week went on the temperature rose and we had some rain. More shoots are beginning to bud. We are hoping that our bulbs will flower soon.

Arkholme CE Primary School: It has been wet and mild this week, and most of the bulbs have sprouted already. The crocus bulbs and daffodils have sprouted as well as the ones in the pots, and the ones in the ground have grown the quickest as well. Best wishes E and A.

Trellech Primary School: We have noticed that our bulbs have started to appear above the soil. We think it is because it has been a lot milder this week.

Trellech Primary School: We really enjoyed collecting the data.

Our Lady of Peace Primary School: I can't believe it is nearly over. We are enjoying it.

Auchenlodment Primary School: We have started to measure the shoots and are excited to see how they grow. 2 of the mystery bulbs have just started to sprout. No sign of the daffodils we planted in the ground.

Boston West Academy: This week we only have two more to start sprouting; it’s also been very cold and hot but also very wet. One of our mystery bulbs are nearly starting to flower☺!!!

St Robert's R.C Primary School: It's been a dry week this week. There a few signs of growing!

Ysgol Deganwy: Nearly all of the plants are growing.

Carnbroe Primary School: We didn't have lots of rain this week and it was very cold. Our bulbs are beginning to sprout.

Tonyrefail Primary School: On Tuesday we noticed 4 of our Daffodil plants have stated to push up through the soil. Yeay!

Garstang St. Thomas' CE Primary School: We've had some frosty mornings but our daffodils are still starting to appear through the soil. The ones in the garden are growing faster!

Henllys CIW Primary: It was pretty cold but no rain. Quite a few plants are growing!

St. Nicholas Primary School: The bulbs have sprouted.

Arkholme CE Primary School: This week has been dry and cold. We have been checking our bulbs all week but because of the cold they haven't grown much. Have a good week.

Ysgol Deganwy: The plants have started to grow and it's been super cold!

St Ronan's Primary School: Most of the daffodil in pots, are at least 2 to 3 cm.