Aquatic life

A nice tie-in to having his aquarium, is the book we're currently reading: Tiddler, also by Julia Donaldson (thanks Elly!). It's a story of a little fish with a big imagination. It includes various sea creatures which you dont normally find in young children's books. Creatures like the plaice fish, which he loves cos it looks cute with just it's eyes peeping out from under the sand.

Again, a very well written book. So witty, but in language simple enough for young kids to understand. I hope to get out a lesson on sequencing too from it but haven't been able to just yet. We both love the richness of the illustration - in terms of detail and colour.

Last week he played the V-Smile/V-Tech game of Nemo, which was teaching kids about the various sea creatures. However, the pictures in the game, shown on the TV screen were too small and blur to be of much help in teaching.That was before we read Tiddler, and before the guppies.

I have plastic sea creatures (like the sets for farm animals, dinosaurs etc) and he knows the names of most of those (except seal - cos I dont know how to differentiate between a seal and sea lion - perhaps it's time for me to find out?)

He's also watched documentaries on Discovery and National Geographic. He also has a book on "wierd" sea creatures (that's the title of the book) with photos of the creatures (not illustrated).

Now, I'm planning a trip to Aquaria so he sees the real thing. Sure it's different from experiencing them out there in their natural environment, but it's as close as he'll get at this age. (Papa is hoping that one day he can take up the Discover Scuba Junior and join him on diving trips).