Yesterday we went on such an exciting trip to the Floating Classroom!
Our topic in science is all about living things and their habitats so to help us with our learning we went to visit Chris and his team at the Floating Classroom in Paddington. We took the bus there and we walked along the canal to the barge. As we set off along the canal, we first did a bird search. We went to either end of the barge in our groups and took part in a bingo-type activity where we tried to spot as many birds as possible. We saw coots, Egyptian geese and Canadian geese too. We all tried to keep an eye out for a heron but we couldn’t spot one! We looked for coot nests along the river and we learned about what they make nests from. Chris also told us that geese often make their nests on land, and in Paddington, they lay eggs on a little island as this is out of the way from big predators. We spoke about the fact that they’re safe there as foxes don’t like to swim…
We came back inside the barge to discuss adaptations of animals. We spoke about the differences that we noticed about the birds that we saw, such as height, feet and different coloured feathers. Chris had a taxidermy bird wing to show us too. This taught us all about feathers – they’re light and waterproof! He showed us how waterproof they are by pouring water directly over the wing. We know that they are light to help birds to fly. After this, we watched a video about a bird of paradise and saw their brightly coloured feathers and the way that they dance and move to attract a mate. Two of us wore colourful feather boas and gave our very best catwalk to show just how well we can show off! We also learned about different beaks, the beaks of ducks compared to those of herons. Herons have very long beaks which are great for catching fish! We even got to try on these beaks! We learned about a hummingbird and how they eat bugs and nectar. Their bill (or beak) is perfect for eating nectar from flowers. We also learned about the difference between feet. We learned about ducks feet and how they are webbed to help them swim! We got to see this in action as the barge came very close to lots of ducks and we saw just how quickly they could swim out of the way.
We learned about the ways in which we can categorise animals. To understand this more, we grouped ourselves based on our school shoes or socks. We then spoke about how we can categorise animals in lots of different ways such as their diets, their habitats and their appearance. We have recently been learning about habitats so this was really useful for us! After this, we learned about food chains. We learned about producers, consumers and predators and we were given a selection of cards and had to organise ourselves into the correct order for our food chain. With this, we had to come up with a way in which we could become the animal so that everybody could tell what animal/plant we were! This was a lot of fun and we were great at understanding the order in which food is consumed!
Later on in our day, we made an animal with plasticine and thought about the animals that might consume it, or the foods it might consume itself and drew our very own food chains on our paper. Some of us even labelled our work, even though we didn’t have to! Our teacher was very impressed with this! This was a lovely opportunity for us to be creative with our learning and we were all very happy that we could take our creations home with us too.
You won’t believe what we saw next as we journeyed back towards the dock… a fox on the island! Even Chris was flabbergasted! If you look carefully in our photos, you can see the fox on the island. We think it might’ve been on the hunt for eggs! We could see that it had a wet tail so it must’ve been very hungry to go for a swim to the island. On this journey back, we stopped off for a minibeast hunt in a local park! Chris told us all about micro-habitats and we were all so excited to see what we could find. We had a sheet of animals and insects that we could look for. We took our magnifying glasses and off we went! One of us even found an exoskeleton of a spider! Chris was very impressed with this.
After our minibeast hunt, it was time for us to head back the dock and head back to school. We had such a brilliant time and we learned so much! All of this information will really help us with our science topic and we can’t wait to learn even more.
We would like to thank the brilliant parent volunteers that came with us yesterday and we would also like to say a really big thank you to the team at the Floating Classroom. We truly had an amazing day and we can’t wait to come back in the future!
What was your favourite part of the day?
I love the floating classroom because i got to dance and be the dancing bird and it was really funny when the boys put on the beak and it was really funny when the girls put on the feet!
Cant wait for our next trip
The Floating Classroom trip was really great and I really like seeing all the photographs of everyone. It’s hard to choose my favourite part but I really liked it when Erin and Honey wore the enormous birds’ feet, we all laughed a lot as they struggled to walk up and down the barge! I also loved making a hedgehog and a snail out of plasticine and I drew an owl and a green plant to complete my food chain.
This looks like a such a fun trip Year 2, and I can tell you did so much learning as well!
I enjoyed the floating classroom because we saw a fox on a island and i also liked when Honey and Erin put the duck feet.I loved when we looked for insects in the park.
What a fabulous trip Year 2. I managed to spot the fox on the island.
I loved when we were talking about the dancing bird, and I also liked when
Honey and Erin were putting on the big duck feet and I can’t wait to do another trip and to do all of those fun things again!
We saw a fox trying to find the bird nests and learned about waterproof feathers. The duck shoes looked like dinosaur feet! The big Heron beaks made me laugh.
I liked it when me and Honey had to put on fake feet which were dinosaur and duck feet.
At the floating class room it was so fun
It was so lovely to go on our trip. We had the best time ever! I liked when Lola and Honey did the bird dance, and when Erin had the heron and duck feet on!
It was really fun and I enjoyed it. My favourite part was making the clay animals.
I enjoyed when we where learning about ducks and when we watched Erin and Honey put rubber duck and bird feet and walked around.I also enjoyed doing the animal putty !!!
I enjoyed it when Honey and Erin put on the dinosaur feet and when Lola and Harmony put on feathers and walked across the boat.
I really enjoyed the trip on the boat as I got to see a Fox on the island.
I liked going on the floating classroom trip because I liked the bird spotting and looking for animals and the food chain was so fun!
I like year two’s first class trip to the floating classroom, because I was lucky with bird spotting.
Year 2 that must have been so fun !! I can’t wait to go with my class and learn as much as you , I CAN’T WAIT !!!⛴⛵
You look like you enjoyed every bit of the floating classroom,I can’t wait to go on Tuesday. You look like you learned a lot and I can’t wait to learn as much as you did. The activities sound amazing and being on the boat looked like a lot of fun to.
I love the trip because I played the bingo but I only spotted seven of the birds with my partner but it’s really okay and I like when I saw a real theafer for that make me feel sick but I don’t care.
Nice learning about animals🦊🦉🐱🐨🐹🐰
l loved the floating classroom! It was so fun and I learnt so many things. We learnt about all different types of animals, some of them were dancing!! We found out that the birds stood on the boat because they to make a nest on stable, dry land! Thank you so much for bringing us on this trip, it was so fun and exciting for us to go to!! 🙂