Discovering the Continents!

It has been a long ,cold and wet Winter but we have had great fun on our journey around the globe discovering the animals of the Continents.In January we “traveled to Africa” and the children chose an animal which appealed to them after we had discussed and looked at the animals of Africa! We all enjoyed the wonderful projects which each child did on his animal along with his family.

February saw us land in South America which was very appropriate as the children had shown great interest in the rain forest and were already expressing concern at the destruction of this habitat by all of us! We have a beautiful book on the rain forest and so projects were chosen once again.

Iseult arrived in the very next day with her “toucan” project! She told us that he likes to eat other birds eggs as well as frogs and insects!David arrived the next with a most impressive tarantula project ! He can live up to 30 years and has trip wires leading to his web where he injects his prey with venom!!Harry told us that there is no such thing as a black panther! He is a black jaguar with a melenistic gene!!Anna  had a great diagram on her project(the jaguar) comparing the spots of the S. American jaguar with the African leopard and cheetah!! Both she and Harry told us that they are great swimmers!We learned from Ella that the howler monkey is the loudest animal and also the laziest monkey!Saorla told us that a group of spider monkeys is called a troop! Sienne did her pink river dolphin with just a little help and we learned from her that he is pink because his blood vessels are just beneath his skin! From Sonny we discovered that  the harpy eagle female is twice the size of the male and they are king and queen of the rain forest!!  Umi s beautiful scarlet macaws live in the under-story and is in grave danger of becoming extinct with forest destruction. We were most amused to hear from Wren that the tapir would weigh 10 Wrens and he is shaped like a pear!! Edan did a lovely project on the llama and he is related to the camel! Rosa told us that the capybara is the largest rodent,a herbivore, very sociable and he landed in Cork recently on a ship from S. America containing fruit! Oscars Goliath bird eating spider is the largest spider in the world . Even though he has 8 eyes,he has bad eye sight but  leg span of 30 cm and eats frogs,lizards and snails! Finally,Michael arrived in just before we moved to Australia with the long awaited anaconda!He is the worlds largest snake and non venomous. He prowls around in the swamps and marches of the Amazon jungle where he kills by squeezing his prey!

We learned so much from the fabulous projects and all enjoy telling and showing them to all who visit our beautiful classroom.Another big “Thank you” from all of us to the best Mums and Dads!