After a quiet evening, the children were out and about early this morning ready for breakfast. Each day breakfast is served at 8.15am and the children begin activities at 9.15am. This sounds reasonable to all I’m sure. Rosie didn’t agree and was prepared to snarl at anyone who attempted a conversation with her. Obviously not a morning person.
Breakfast was a variety of cereal, toast, croissant, bacon, sausage, egg, hash browns, beans and juice. How Mr Britten managed to eat it all is a mystery.
Today was mainly spent at Flamborough Head. It is the perfect location to learn about coastal erosion and also has plenty of opportunity to learn about eco-systems on the wave cut platform. If this sounds all very educational, I can also write in more child friendly language. Flamborough Head is the perfect location to hunt for crabs in rock pools, climb through caves and eat ice cream!
Weather today was very sunny. The purple rain coat has yet to be seen. The forecast is good until Thursday afternoon so we may get to see it on the moors.
The crabs were fairly tricky to find especially for some of the girls – Isabella, Isobel, Georgia and Alex who complained that the seaweed was too wet, the rocks too slippery and the crabs too nippy. Many of the boys attempted to encourage them with insults such as “stop being such girls” but this didn’t seem to bother them at all.
James S, amongst others, has a new word – beast! It’s a perfect example of how language changes with the generations. In the past everything was cool, wicked, mint, fab, brill, groovy, bad, sick etc. It basically depends on your age. Now everything is beast. No idea why, but there it is. I’m sure next year a new word will have replaced it. By the way, if you are over the age of 30, don’t attempt to use the word “beast” unless you want to deeply embarrass either yourself or your children.
After the crab hunt, the children had their lunch on the beach. Each day, there is a choice of five different sandwiches. The children select one of the sandwiches and these are ready for collection in the morning. There is a little bit of flexibility with the sandwiches e.g. mayo or no mayo. No salad was on every selection! I’m sure, by the end of the week, some of our more fussy ones will be choosing bread no tuna, no mayo, no salad, no butter.
The afternoon was spent looking at and sketching some coastal features. Stacks, arches, caves, cracks and geos were all spotted and made notes on. Georgia was very honoured to find out that a coastal feature had been named after her.
We then drove up to Bempton Cliffs. This is an important site for the RSPB and is very popular with bird watchers. The children were given a pair of binoculars each and set off in search of puffins, razorbills, fulmars and a type of cormorant popular with school children everywhere. (Look it up if you don’t know what I’m talking about. We didn’t manage to spot any of those birds but did see all the others. Normally, the puffin is the most exciting bird we see but today was different. For the first time ever at Bempton, a peregrine falcon has decided to nest there. Many birdwatchers had spent the whole day watching the nest and allowed the children to look at the falcon using their high powered equipment. After the excitement of the falcon, we went and had an ice cream to calm us down.
This evening is a free choice evening. Some children are studying sea creatures in the labs, some are writing a diary, some are helping with recycling and some are watching England vs. Ukraine. I’ll let parents guess which choice their child has made. Except Mrs Wellings who will be pleased to read that Ben is determined to find out the difference between hard and soft shelled crabs.
