Fish River Snack

       

         
   

Splat Fish Painting

          
Another dollar store find inspired this art today. 
Squishy fish with a ball that lights up inside. 
What happens when you add paint to an intriguing sensory toy? 
Take a look.
      

       

They did manage to light the ball up a few times but once the fish was
covered with paint it was difficult to tell.
I wasn't sure how well these puffy fish would work with leaving a print. 
The children figured out how to mould them to get great results.

Fish Hatchery Tour

   Oh we had a fantastic day at the fish hatchery. 
          Today was egg intake day.
                         Yay!
 
                     So many fish to see. 
              Painted on the ground to follow
      
             and in the holding tanks to watch.

  
The fish have come back up the river to the place where they were born. 
They are excited and we saw many of them jumping out of the water.

  
We watched the works herd the fish into smaller compartments closer
                                         to a lift.
 
Once the salmon were brought up with the lift, they were dumped
into a tray.  The workers sorted the fish looking for female salmon.


      
The next step was to slit the fish and remove all the eggs.  The eggs are
tiny and bright orange.   The eggs came out so quickly and so many that
                       we couldn’t count them.

     
 
A favourite part of the tour is going down below the tanks to get a face to fish
view.  Watching the fish up close really allows us to understand their size, body
parts (fin, eyes, teeth) and colours.

That led to our art project…
   
              Painting a salmon and lifting a print. 
We had only one fish so the children worked in teams of two taking turns
                     painting the fish
 
     then helping each other rub the paper and lifting it off.
        
     They each had a print to take home as a keepsake.

We finished with songs, snack and a story.

I found a book called Ebbie and Flo by Irene Kelly. 
It was great for telling the life of two salmon siblings.
      
Ebbie is a smart little salmon who wants to stay in his nest in the
small stream where he was born. Flo is Ebbie's twin sister. She
wants to explore the whole river, the estuary and the deep blue sea.

 
    
Today was a wonderful experience to learn more about the salmon that we have been pretending to catch in our dramatic play area at school.  I wonder how we can incorporate salmon eggs at school?

Fishing for Salmon

    
The local rivers and creeks are full of salmon so we’ve brought the same idea into the classroom.  We are fortunate to be able to see lots of eagles here too.  And if we’re really lucky to be in the right place at the right time we’ll see one swoop down to catch a fish.
   
    If you visit one of the rivers you will find lots of people fishing. 
    
                        
It became apparent watching some of the children that they have
              experienced fishing before.
      
     We added a big nest on top of our tree for the eagle to live. 
              We would fly him down to catch a fish.

                     Or help him by delivering fish.
            
Tomorrow we are going on a field trip to the fish hatchery then to a park at the river.  Maybe we’ll see an eagle.  We’ll definitely see sea gulls because they feast on the dead salmon.