Today the Year 1&2 Classes from East Hoathly and Park Mead joined together for a sunny adventure down on Eastbourne beach.
Once on the beach the classes were really keen to start exploring the beach and even more keen to go and paddle their feet “will it be warm”.
Some children chose to look amongst the stones to see what they could find, then using the ID sheet they were able to work out their findings.
They found Mermaids Purses, Whelk eggs, dry Sea Weed and some stones with holes that went all the way through. Working in groups there was a lot of construction on various different sand castles. Some were mounds of sand surrounded by a watery moat, working hard to fill their moat with buckets of sea water before it soaked away into the sand. Whereas others were made with stone, using wet sand as a kind of cement to hold them together. One group dug a rather large hole and placed stones around the edge. When asked what they were doing they said
“we are making a rock pool”. Others chose to dig channels down to the sea, this was for the water that was running down the beach to run in. They kept having to make it longer as the tide was going out.
As the tide went out it exposed the bottom of the groins, this was a great place for us to see some marine life. The children found some Limpets, Barnacles, Whelks and Anemones.
Some of the Anemones were open as the water was still just covering them, this allowed the class to see their tentacles, where as others that were out of the water were closed.
The children enjoyed paddling their feet, running back up the beach as the waves broke trying not to let the wave touch them. Some paddled a little more than their feet getting a little soggy. Others took the approach of jumping the waves, sometimes not getting it quite right and getting splashed by the wave.
It was great to see the two classes play and work together, really amazing day Squirrels and Chestnuts!
