What a wonderful day we had at the Blue Reef Aquarium in Tynemouth!  Everybody was fascinated by the different kinds of sea life that can be found all around the world.  We liked using the enormous underwater magnifying glasses to look more closely at the strange creatures.  We weren’t supposed to put our hands in the water in case the fish nibbled us, but some of us didn’t notice the signs!  Luckily the piranhas and sharks were kept in closed tanks! We saw the sea horse family, floating peacefully in the water and noticed a busy little guppy, digging in the gravel with its nose, collecting a mouthful of sand and then depositing it a bit further along the tank!

We loved seeing the seals in particular.  We stood in the Splash Zone and got soaked! Did you know that seals use their whiskers to detect things in the water?  We cheered Marv and Sophos as they raced around the tank, showing off their diving skills.

After a tasty packed lunch, we strolled along the prom to the park at Cullercoats. We spotted loads of enormous tankers and ferries sailing along the coast.  We were surprised to bump into Ellen’s class who were also on a trip!  We played happily with our friends until it was time to get back on the bus.  We had one last run up the coast, to spot St Mary’s Lighthouse and Spanish City before we went back to school.  The sea air had totally tired us out and so we had a nice quiet journey home.

We had a great time yesterday at Thornley Woods. We were looking to see what animals we could find. We have been learning all about different habitats as part of our Science topic. We were also on the hunt for a perfect spot to build our own den. Once we found it we had to then scavenge for bracken, leaves and sticks. Everyone got stuck in and had fun searching for things to use. We even had a pretend fire and sang camp fire songs around it. Thank fully the rain stayed off and the ground was dry.

Everyone had so much fun!!

We were a little busy at the end of last week, so apologies for this late blog post!

We introduced our new story, ‘There’s a hole at the bottom of the sea,’ and everyone really enjoyed joining in with the repeated phrases.  We learned the signs for octopus, jellyfish, eel, snail, fish and dolphin and we plan to learn lots more underwater and seaside signs in the weeks to come.  We liked finding  out about food chains – the snail eats the weed, the squid eats the snail, the eel eats the squid and the shark eats the eel!

We started to set up our new role play area – we’re making a seaside scene, complete with a sandy beach and a rockpool.  Hannah brought in her blow up dinghy, but sadly it didn’t stay blown up for long!  We still had fun ‘floating’ around the Caterpillar Garden! We’ve been doing as much outdoor learning as possible when the sun has come out.  We enjoyed playing in the huge sandpit, filling up our buckets right to the top!

In class we have been practising ‘same’ and ‘different’ and using our flash cards to help us when we play pairs games.  Some of us have really good memories and can find pairs straight away.  Some of us still need some practice!

We had a fantastic time at Tynemouth Blue Reef Aquarium – watch out for our blog about it on Friday!

We’ve had great fun making a start on some messy play for our Seaside display, we have been painting with lots of different utensils and different shades of blues and greens to match the sea. We have also been busy decorating a giant box that we think might make a great boat to sail in. As well as all our messy play we have been digging and building sandcastles, looking at sea creatures and just having fun in the sun!