School excursion

Today Louka's class went on an excursion to the Coastal Environment Centre at Narrabeen. One of the other mums had put her name down as a parent helper on the assumption that I would be going. So I felt I ought to put my name down too. And then my name was pulled out of a hat and hers was not. So here I was  going to keep a bunch of five kids together on the beach and rock platform - yeah right.

The weather was lovely for a beach visit - warm and sunny but not hot. It would not have been so pleasant last week in the rain. My group split up right from the start, with three in the first bus and two (with me) in the second bus. But we all gathered together at the other end.

At first we went down to the lagoon to look at birds through binoculars. There were only seagulls and a pelican so we soon started to investigate footprints on the sand. We saw some small mammal-like prints that the CEC educator guessed were from a water rat.

Then we went back to the building and learned, using a catchment model, what happens to rubbish, dog poo and fertilizer when it rains - it all goes into the sea of course.

We gathered round to listen to a story about a girl who got a limpet stuck to her finger then went inside to look at the displays there. The animals preserved in glass jars were fascinating to the kids.

We walked towards the rock platform where each group was given a life form to search for. Our group was assigned sea stars. I thought these might be too hard, but the kids found quite a few (they were tiny and matched the colour of the rocks and I didn't find a single one). So we went on to look for other creatures. We found plenty of limpets, mulberry whelks and zebra shells, and quite a few sea anemones (which the kids squealed about when they stuck their fingers in) but no sea urchins. Fortunately we also found no blue ring octopuses or bristle worms, which we'd been warned to watch out for.

After a good hunt we walked over the headland (quite a climb up a staircase) to Turimetta Beach where we did some beachcombing. There was a lot of pumice, which Louka finds fascinating, and lots of kelp. We also found some bits of cuttlefish shell and some rather smelly cunjevoi. Then each group got to make a sand sculpture of a sea creature and decorate it with our finds. We made a turtle; another group made a very impressive mermaid.

 At about a quarter past two we trekked back over the headland to the waiting bus. On the trip back to school a couple of kids fell asleep. It had been a tiring but enjoyable day.