On 31st October, a lady named Grace came from the Mull Aquarium to teach us more about sea life and to set up our own aquarium. First we played a game about food chains, we had post-its on our heads with sunlight and different animals written on them. We had to put them in the right order to show the food chain. We got ready to go to the shore to look for sea life. Grace found a crab which had malted (it had shed its shell), we never realised that crabs did this. We then started hunting for sea life, we found lots of crabs, sea anemones, limpets, mussels, sand hoppers, sand worms, whelks and lots more. Continue reading
On the 5th October Lucy and Jess came to talk to us about pearl mussels. Lucy first showed us an empty shell which was more than one hundred years old. She told us the lifecycle of the pearl mussel, they have to try and find a host fish to live on until they get big enough to drop off onto the riverbed. If they land in mud then they suffocate so they have to land on gravel, sand or rocks. When they suck in the water to find algae sometimes they get bits of gravel which they don’t like, so they push it to the edge of their shell and wrap it in mother of pearl; this is how they make the pearls. There is a way to get the pearl out of the mussel without killing it but it takes longer so some people just get a knife and pry them open which is now illegal. Continue reading
The pupils at Kilchoan Primary and Nursery travelled yesterday, Thursday 30th Jun, to Acharacle for a fun day. The children had an amazing time and took part in lots of different activities, such as disco dome, art, boat challenge and marshmallow toasting in the woods. We would like to thank everyone at Acharacle for inviting us and looking after us. The children made lots of friends and thoroughly enjoyed the day.
We would also like to thank Sheil buses and Martin who have been fantastic this week and transported the Kilchoan children around Ardnamurchan for free. This is much appreciated.
On Tuesday we were dropped off at the pier to catch the 10:15am boat to Tobermory so we could go to the Mull Aquarium. The mull aquarium is the only catch and release aquarium in Europe, they let them go after a maximum of 4 weeks. We got on the ferry and we went inside because it was windy and drizzling. We saw a big boat, fishing boats and yachts on the way. When we got to Tobermory we walked to the aquarium, it was quite a long walk and we were all a bit cold. Once we were at the aquarium we got a tour from Connor. He showed us a shark, that looked like a dog fish, and the shark had laid eggs which were know as mermaids purses. There was also a giant crab which was about 29 years old, it was frightening because it had huge pincers. Then we saw a Pollock, Connor showed us a trick where he put in a stick and the fish followed it. Continue reading
On Tuesday 8th March we went to Sgoil na Coille. When we arrived our first activity was to identify leaves, certain leaves related to certain letters, and we were put into teams of four. The teams were each given ten leaves and we had to work out the sequence of the leaves to make a word. The word we were looking for was woodpecker. The next activity was making dens for creatures. We were given plastic insects and we had to make a shelter for each of the creatures. For example, for the spider we found it a home in a log, made a little fire outside to keep it warm, and made it a bed out of sticks, moss and lichen. Continue reading
On Thursday 3rd March we went to Sanna Bay. We all met in the car park and all of our parents and friends were invited to walk with us. We started walking up the dirt track until we arrived at the start of the beach. To begin with we explored a section of the beach and found a piece of broken pottery with roses on it. After we were finished with that section of the beach we moved onto the next, where we had a competition to see who could jump the furthest off the rocks. It was quite funny and we got a lot of sand in our boots. Continue reading
One afternoon Judith from the RSPB came to the school to talk about wildlife. She taught us about animals and what they sound like. We had to put up a big tent, then we played a game where we had to be birds and we had to go and get fish. At the end we learnt how long rubbish can stay in the sea and we measured how long it can stay in the water.
Holly
Kilchoan Primary School 