Year 3 Trip to the Natural History Museum

On Tuesday 12th October, year 3 had a very successful and enjoyable day out at the Natural History museum.  This coincided with the children’s science topic, rocks and soils and even our Geography topic, volcanoes.  On the morning of the trip, 24 very excited children and 3 very excited adults turned up at school! We were the first class at English Martyr's to be on our first adventure after the pandemic! 
 
As soon as we arrived at the stunning Natural History Museum building and visited the green zone. In the green zone, we learnt all about the ''fossil woman'' called Mary Anning who was a palaeontologist who discovered the skull of an ancient reptile called an icthyosaur (like the shape of a dolphin) at the age of 12 in the cliffs at Lyme Regis which is in Dorset. Later on in her life, she also found the skeleton of a marine reptile called a plesiosaur. We bumped into a ground sloth too from South America which we mistook for a dinosaur because of its size and shape, which is now extinct. Similarly, the dodo bird is also extinct and was also another fascinating bird that we learnt about. The dodo bird comes from Mauritius, and the dodo's natural habitat was almost completely destroyed once humans started settling on Mauritius. Pigs, cats, monkeys and rats were another big problem for dodo's because they started eating the dodo's and their eggs. Did you know that our chicken egg is the smaller than an ostrich's egg and an elephant's egg!

After lunch, we visited the red zone which was all about the earthquakes and volcanoes - a must for us and the zone we highly anticipated! The fifteen plate tectonics screen was so interesting because we got to locate some of the volcanoes that we have studied and even learn about where the earthquakes are around the world. We were able to see that most of the volcanoes and earthquakes are on the edges of the plate tectonics. Indonesia has the most active volcanoes, two of which are called Tambora and Krakatoa. Krakatoa is so famous because it was the first really gigantic volcano to explode where humans had technology to transmit accounts of what was happening! Volcanologists, who are geologist who study volcanoes, use a heat suit which looks like it is made of foil and can handle up to 1,000 degrees celsius which we also saw. We were fascinated by the phoenix bird that lives by volcanic ash. Last but not least, we experienced the Kobe earthquake in 1995 inside the Kobe Supermarket which we felt what it would be like to be in a real live earthquake and how terrifying it must be when the earth gets angry. We were able to imagine a glimpse of what Mount Vesuvius was like for the people living there and how La Palma must feel like currently. We even said a prayer for the people in La Palma and have kept them in our prayers.

By the end of the day, we were more than ready to make our way back after all the learning we had done.  The children chatted excitedly about the different experiences they had had on the day.  Overall it was a hugely successful trip, where once again, the children behaved beautifully throughout the day and made us teachers very proud.     
This trip was so rewarding and educational and helped us to bring our learning to life.​