Year 2 blog:
Year 2’s Amazing Adventure to Marwell Zoo
Year 2 had a fantastic time on their school trip to Marwell this week! We were incredibly lucky to have a beautiful, sunny day, perfect for exploring and spotting animals.
The excitement began as soon as the coach arrived. We could hardly contain ourselves and sang songs all the way there, building up to a day full of adventure!
As soon as we entered the zoo, we quickly spotted the flamingos. They were standing gracefully on one leg, and we learned a brilliant new fact, a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance!
We were then greeted by Laura, who took us on a special expedition around the park. During our adventure, we became real animal trackers! We looked closely at clues such as footprints, water sources, food, and shelter to help us identify where animals had been. Of course, one of our favourite topics of discussion was… animal poo! It might sound funny, but we discovered how important it is for tracking animals and learning about their diets.
We visited the giraffes and were amazed to learn that, just like humans, they only have seven neck bones, despite their incredibly long necks! We explored different animal tracks too, looking closely at how many toes animals have, ranging from one to four.
One of our favourite facts was about rhinos. We learned that their dung can tell us what they have been eating and even help them communicate with other rhinos. We also discovered that rhinos often poo on top of each other’s dung in the same place-this is called a midden! From this, we could tell that the animals we were tracking were herbivores.
Our final stop with Laura was the tiger enclosure, where we saw Pasha the tiger relaxing in the sunshine. We learned that tigers are orange because some of their prey cannot see the colour orange, helping them to stay camouflaged.
After a busy morning, it was time for lunch! We enjoyed a lovely picnic under a tree, chatting excitedly about everything we had seen so far.
In the afternoon, we visited the tropical house, where we put our Amazon rainforest learning to the test by identifying the different layers. We were lucky enough to spot a sloth, which was very exciting! The red panda was another favourite, even though it was high up in the trees, peeking down at us.
Next, we visited the primates, who entertained us by swinging through the trees. The snow leopards watched us carefully from high up in their rocky habitat, and finally, we visited the penguins. At first, they were sunbathing, but when they noticed our smiling faces, they came swimming over to us, showing just how perfectly adapted they are to life in the water.
At the end of the day, we climbed back onto the coach -tired but very happy after such an exciting adventure. What a fantastic day Year 2 had!
