'Nemo', Growing and Cooking

finding Nemo

The majority of the children had been to see the film “Finding Nemo”, so we used this as a basis for a topic on under the sea. The children are enjoying discovering the different sizes, shapes, colours and patterns of fish and other sea creatures.One wall of the class area is being turned into an under the sea panorama, decorated with fish and sea creatures, made by the children. With adult supervision, the children have looked up various web sites to find pictures and pieces of information. Fabian is in the process of making an intranet site for the children. As part of this topic, the whole group visited the London Aquarium. The children enjoyed their visit to find Nemo, a clownfish. They were as fascinated by the sharks, in the huge tanks, as by the rockfish that looked like barnacled rocks, at the bottom of the tank, until they moved! We had a visit to the seaside touch pool, where a marine biologist talked about starfish, crabs and sea anemones and the children took it in turns to hold them. After lunch, we continued our search for Nemo, via the ray touch pool and, just before we had to leave, we found him.
www.londonaquarium.co.uk
Growing

(our year long topic)

Our hyacinth bulbs grew well over the winter and have flowered during the first half of the term. The children were delighted by the colours of the flowers that appeared on the plants they had taken home. Purely by chance, all the ones planted for school turned out to be dark pink. During the second half of this term we shall start to plant our potatoes, beans, tomatoes etc.
blooming hyacinths  
Cooking
As we try to cook each week we decided to make savoury octopus biscuits.

Cheesey Octopus Biscuits

Ingredients
150g self-raising flour
½ tsp salt
25g butter
75g cheese finely grated
1 egg and 2 tablespoons of milk beaten together.
Raisins for eyes

Method
Sift the flour and salt together. Add butter and rub together until it resembles breadcrumbs. Reserve a tablespoon of cheese and add the rest to the bowl and mix in. Reserve a tablespoon of the egg mixture and add the rest to the bowl. Mix in to form a dough. Divide mixture into six and with floured hands roll the dough into sausage shapes. Gently flatten each shape then use a blunt knife to make four cuts for legs. Gently pull the legs apart. Pinch their ends to make points and bend them out. Brush the shapes with the egg mixture. Sprinkle with the reserved grated cheese. Add raisins for eyes. Lift the octopuses onto a baking tray and bake in oven for 8-10 minutes at gas mark 6, 200C or 400F. until golden.

  cheesey octopus biscuits