Aquarium visit

Last week we took a trip into the city and had a morning at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. www.sheddaquarium.org

We last visited over a year ago, at which time Henry was not that interested in looking at anything for any length of time. This visit was a whole different experience. It was all i could do to drag him away from the turtle tank, the marine reef exhibit and the rays.

We started the visit watching a diver in the marine reef exhibit feed the huge turtle, sharks and rays. This scared Henry last year, but this year he was enthralled, and was full of questions regarding why the diver didn't get eaten by the fish!

Onto all the other tanks displaying salt water, river and lake species. He asked so many questions about why the fish were certain colours or sizes.

It was so much fun. Henry & his friend spent ages sat watching a ray as it played peek a boo with them, up and down the glass of the tank...its mouth smiling!

We saw Nemo as well!

On returning home we read a number of Henry's fish type stories including:

Tiddler - The story telling fish - by Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffer

(a firm favorite on the book shelf). A story all about a small fish who has a lot of excuses for arriving late at school every day!

Fidgety Fish - by Ruth Galloway

A story about an adventurous little fish who feels the need to explore.

Our activity was matching words to pictures.

I found photos on line of some of the fish we saw at the aquarium; shark, clown fish, leaf fish, plaice and sting ray, and printed them onto paper at home. I cut each picture out individually. I then printed out the name of each fish on paper and again cut these out separately.

Together, using the first letter of each word we paired the fish pictures with their names.