We have been planning our own investigations related to our topic. We can choose to carry out our own investigation or work with some other children.  After we carry out our investigation we evaluate it or talk about it with our friends.  Investigations have included:

• Carrying out experiments about floating and sinking.
• Investigating how sea creatures behave.
• Sorting out animals into different groups.
• Creating pictures/art work/ play dough models with our knowledge of the underwater world and the features of various sea creatures.

Below you can see some examples of our plans and how we used our Aistear time to develop our understanding of "Under the Sea" in many different ways.

We have been really busy learning about the underwater world! We have answered most of our initial questions...and now we have come up with some really interesting new questions.  We are wondering..

• Why whale sharks are called whale sharks? Are they a shark or a whale? One boy in our class suggested that they are just confused!
• Why do crabs walk sideways?
• How do jellyfish see?  We noticed that in our story books the jellyfish pictures have eyes, but when we looked at photos of them we couldn't find any eyes!
• Why do manta rays have a barb if they don't want to hurt anyone?
• Does the hole in a whale's head give him a headache?
• What happens if we don't keep the sea clean?

Ms Emerson is so impressed with our questions. We have come up with some ways of finding the answers so we will continue our investigation! If you come across any pictures or stories which might help us please feel free to share them with us.  Have a lovely weekend!

Today we had a very special visitor!  We had been wondering how people could go swimming with whales and dolphins..so Derek came into our classroom to answer our questions!
Derek showed us his real scuba diving equipment.  He told us how we can breathe underwater if we use a special tank full of air and a regulator (a type of hose with a mouth piece).    He told us that when you breathe underwater you make lots of bubbles!  We told him that we saw a manta ray playing in the bubbles in the diving video.   Derek had a special jacket which had buttons on it.  One button filled the jacket with air so he could float, the other button let the air out so he could sink!
Derek also told us that you need a special licence to go scuba diving to make sure that you know how to keep safe underwater, and also to keep the animals safe.  Finally, we all had a chance to examine the equipment.  Thank you Derek!