Horniman Museum Aquarium

When our Auntie and Uncle came over from Scotland we decided we wanted to go to the Horniman Museum again.  They had a fantastic aquarium which we didn't get to see the last time we went there so I was really excited.

The first thing we saw in the aquarium was a huge starfish clinging on with it's suckers to it's glass tank.

My brother really wanted to see the starfish too but he was just a bit short!

 Here's a picture of the seahorse that we saw using it's tail as a hook to cling on to the seagrass.  We learnt some fun facts about seahorses...

• Seahorses eat small microscopic krill floating through the water.  They suck them in through their long, straw-like snout.
• With seahorses it's the male who becomes pregnant and gives birth to the babies.  They are usually pregnant for between 10 days and 6 weeks.
• Their name comes from the Greek words for horse (hippos) and sea monster (campus).

This is a really cool kind of ray called a blue spotted sting ray.  

 This is pacific sea nettle.  They had about 2 of them at the aquarium.  I thought they were really cool just drifting along in big circle shapes and never changing pace or suddenly changing direction.  They hunt by dragging their long stinging tentacles behind them, catching small krill and sea dwelling creatures.  They stun them with their painful sting.  If they were to sting a human though it might be irritating but the poison is very rarely deadly.

Amazon Rainforest Frogs

These are amazon milk frogs.  They aren't poisonous like some of the rainforest dwelling frogs that live there but I still though these guys were pretty cool.  If they're attacked they secrete a milky liquid out of bumps on their bodies. 

This is a blue poison frog hiding in a burrow.  Though the one we saw was only as poisonous as the milk frog (not poisonous at all) because it's not the blue poison frogs own body that makes it poisonous but it's the ants it eats in it's natural habitat.  So, when they are bred in captivity like the frog in this aquarium they aren't poisonous at all! 

 We were also lucky enough to see these amazing fish eggs.  Look how they are cleverly attached to the coral.

Afghan Dance Moves Flash Mob at the Museum of Childhood

We went to the Museum of Childhood.  As well as getting to see some awesome old-fashioned toys and do a lot of craft I got to join a Flash Mob.

We've seen lots of Flash Mobs before on Youtube and they always looked like a lot of fun.  When we turned up at the museum I was really happy to hear that we could go and do one if we wanted.

First we went into a big room where we practised the Afghan Dance moves.  The parents had to join in too.  The moves were based on kite-flying.

Then when we got home Dad told me that kids in Afghanistan would have kite wars with kites they had made themselves, but instead of just flying the kites into the other kites, the kids would make the kites with thin blades on the edges which they would use to cut the string of the opponents kite.

Here's a video of us doing the flash mob in the main hall of the Museum.  Can you spot any moves that look like a kite flying - or like someone flying a kite?

BUG ICE CREAM!

We were going to Hampstead Heath one Sunday when we suddenly spotted THIS sign!  It was on a bike cart and they seemed to be giving away free ice-cream.

Of course we quickly hurried over but as we got there my face turned as green as a frog - the ice-cream was made out of bugs and insects!!!

Even though it was full of bits of bugs I decided to be brave and give it a try.  I decided to try the one that looked the least buggy - which was the vanilla, chocolate, strawberry.  It had worms, grasshopers and other mixed critters.

Isaac and I bravely took our first bite!  It was absolutely....... ...... ..... DELICIOUS!!!

In fact we even went back for seconds... and thirds!

The idea behind the bug ice-cream is that eating bugs is better than eating meat because bugs are a sustainable source of food, easily farmed without much damage to the environment.  Also, they are much healthier than meat because they have about the same amount of protein but with much less fat.

Spot the Bird

                                

 One day when we went to Kensington park I caught sight of a tree that was rustling and some leaves were falling.  I thought there was a squirrel because that's how squirrels usually behave dropping nuts and making leaves fall when they jump.

But when I looked up into the trees there weren't any squirrels.  In fact I couldn't see anything.  So I had to walk around and listen carefully under the tree for a while.  Then when I squinted really hard something caught my eye.  It was a tiny red triangle.  Then when I focused on that one part of the tree I could just make out the outline of a awesome bird.  It camouflaged so well that I could barely see it.

When we got home my Mum said she thought it might be a green parakeet, so I looked up a green parakeet, and some of them looked a bit similar but the wings of the bird I had seen were darker and the bird I saw didn't have nearly as many colours.  Then I decided to look up if any parakeets lived in London and I found a Wikipedia page on the Kingston Parakeet and when I looked at the picture that they had it looked exactly the same.

I learned:

• there are only about 50,000 Kingston Parakeets living in the wild today
• they are most common in southeastBritain
• They are also called the Twickenham Parakeet.
• They get their name because they live around the suburbs of Twickenham and Kingston.