The year two children have been learning about the coral reefs. As part of this study, they made edible coral polyps in class. They also each wrote descriptive poems about the coral reef. Lines from everyone’s poems were chosen to create a class poem. The Amazing Coral Reef Yr-2 poem. Wow – such it really conveys the busy life of the coral reef habitat – Well done, Year 2!
Each coral polyp consisted of a hard outer skeleton (paper cupcake liner), a soft body (marshmallow), a central mouth (candy corn) feeding tentacles (licorice strings) and algae to provide food for the coral (green sprinkles).
The coral polyps were put close together to form a reef. Then the children pretended to be parrotfish and ate their polyps, leaving behind the non-living part of the coral polyp that is the hard outer skeleton.
Another exciting lesson for the children was examining a variety of local reef fish and learning about the basic anatomy of a fish. The children had the opportunity to open the mouth of the fish in order to look at the teeth, to look at the gills of the fish and to explore its fins, scales and the lateral line.
Look out coral, here come some hungry parrotfish!
and some more…
Oh no – all the living coral polyps have been eaten! Only the non-living, hard outer skeleton is left.
“Delicious!” say the parrotfish.