KS1 visit Blue Reef Aquarium
As part of their 'Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!' topic, KS1 enjoyed a trip to the Blue Reef Aquarium.
We had plenty of time to explore the aquarium and had so much fun identifying different water creatures and their habitats. A highlight was watching the stingrays and otters being fed.
Willow Class were very excited to learn all about some sea creatures in our ‘Hands on’ workshop. We looked at a starfish, with four long arms and one shorter one. We found out that it was rescued by Blue Reef and had lost an arm! However starfish are so amazing that they can grow back a lost arm. So this starfish had nearly grown back a completely new arm! We also learnt that starfish can have between 5 and 40 arms, and that each arm can have 100 feet on it! That’s a lot of feet. Then we found out that they have 2 stomachs in case they eat something horrid and need to leave 1 behind! Everyone had a go at carefully touching the starfish.
“It’s bumpy but OK. Not slimy!” said Samson.
Then we were introduced to a spidercrab. He made us jump as he was so big! When he was held carefully upside down, he went to sleep, and then we could touch his shell, and look at his eye stalks. He was very tough and spikey!
Beech Class enjoyed hearing all about sharks. We learnt to identify how large a shark would have been by their jaw skeletons. We also looked at shark skin which if you ran your hand over it, it felt smooth in one direction and like sandpaper the other. Before the workshop we were quite frightened of sharks but by the time we'd finished, we realised that they were not as scary as we first thought.
At the end of the day, we just about had time to visit the Victorian bandstand by the beach.
Following our trip to the aquarium, Beech Class had to write a review to encourage more people to visit. Here are a couple from Year 1...
The Blue Reef Aquarium is an exciting day out for your school. There is lots to see and learn. It is very interesting. You can learn about fish, lizards and otters and lots more. You can go to the shark workshop. They let you feel shark's skin and teeth. The rays are very nosy. They swim very gracefully. They like to poke their heads out the water. There is a tunnel through the aquarium. There's lots of fish swimming over your head. You can see lots of seaweed and coral. It's very light inside the tunnel and colourful. There's lots of space in the tunnel you can fit lots of children inside it.
Reviewed by: Bailey
Blue Reef is amazing because they are Clown fish, Dory fish, starfish, sting rays and piranhas. There is also a workshop about shark’s teeth and skin. There is also eels, sweets and otters. There is also a game and a café and a band stand that is Victorian and there is a park. Outside Blue Reef there is a beautiful view.
Reviewed by: Pascal
Click here to find out more about Willow Class and click here for Beech Class.
