Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Octopi

Over the weekend Caden had the idea of getting some squid and octopus to eat. I said we could but we didn't find the time on the Sunday to do it. I said to him that if he wanted squid he would have to remind me on Monday morning. When they got up at 7 (nice lie in compared to their usual 6am starts) the first thing he said was 'Don't forget the squid...' - cute!

So we went to Morrisons and while they had no squids they had two fantastic, whole Octopus (es) (i) (opodes) (read on for an explanation of these potential suffixes). Caden chose the right one! We brought it home and then dissected it. Sadly no photos of the dissection, I was covered in Octopus slime (my hands still smell despite many hand washes). Caden knew they were molluscs and told the man at the fish counter. He told me that they didn't have eyes, I assured him they did and we looked at them, I made one move which he liked. Then he asked whether they had eyelids. We couldn't find eyelids and guessed this was because they are in the sea so they have no need to wet their eyes with eyelids. The sea does it for them.

We found the octopus's beak, he loved this. We moved the tentacles around and then cut open it's head to look for the brain. We found a brain-like mass and various other slippery and nodule-like protrusions. We didn't get too technical, it was more of a 5 year old's fascinated look inside an Octopus's body.

We talked about the plural of Octopus. I said it was Octopi but since had a look (knowing that occasionally one can get caught up in general ignorance) and it is interesting to learn that it is more likely to be Octopodes. Though I don't think anyone would actually know what we meant if we used that plural without an explanation. Octopus plural grammar link



Then I sliced him up and we ate him fried in butter and garlic. They really enjoyed this although Caden was chewing on one piece for about 20 minutes before he finally gave up and spat it out. 



We checked on the progress of our cress heads. There is growth. On Saturday we found that the seeds had swollen and were filling out the top of the heads. Then Sunday, there was about 1-3mm of shoot. Today we got the ruler and the kids had a go at measuring the shoots.

Caden did a pretty good job of measuring his, we counted the little black marks, each one representing a mm. We counted 6 for him. 


Miles tried to measure his. We will report back on our findings with photos of the cress hair. 


We went to Snakes and Ladders play gym in Houghton Regis for their friend's birthday party. We were there for 3 solid hours. They really had a good play there. They loved it!




This was a volcano model that they could get inside and have dino battles with the resident dinosaurs. They loved this! 




The Duplo table which both of them got stuck into. 


The finished 'man' model. 


Playing with their friend Harlow. 




This was where they managed to get me to climb through the playframe with them for a while. We are all in between the levels and climbing, here. 

1 comment:

  1. Amazing - I'm really squeamish when it comes to fish.

    ReplyDelete

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