The National Marine Aquarium is launching an impressive series of home learning sessions for children all across the UK from tomorrow.
With schools having been forced to close their doors due to England’s third national lockdown amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, children up and down the country have once again reverted to home learning programmes, leaving parents often searching for new and innovative ways to keep the little ones occupied and educated at the same time.
This is why the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth is keen “to make sure we are doing our bit to support the thousands of students and teachers that connect with our charity each year” through providing live-streamed sessions.
According to the aquarium, research has shown that encounters with marine environments (physical or virtual) have a powerful effect on our emotional state and general wellbeing, and with the country in lockdown, there’s never been a more important time to ensure everyone has access to “a weekly dose of ocean”.
The National Marine Aquarium’s Home Learning Sessions are completely free, and will be streamed live to homes across the UK through YouTube every Friday starting tomorrow, until 26th February.
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They are the perfect way to “round your week off with a bang, or help you wind down for the weekend”.
Well, first up is the weekly ‘Deep Science’ lessons – aimed at KS2 Primary School-aged children – which will see aquarium teachers meet some of the centre’s amazing animals, as well as stopping in at the AquaLab to explore the science behind the animated ocean exploration TV series The Deep – which is on CBBC every weekday at 12pm during lockdown.
Every Friday at 1pm – 1:20pm, you can expect to learn some fascinating facts and watch real-time experiments, as well as being provided with some curriculum-linked ideas to follow up with at home.
Tomorrow’s session is intriguingly titled ‘Underwater Volcanoes’, with other sessions set to include:
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22nd January – Creature Classification
29th January – Nautical Navigation
5th February – Ocean Mysteries
12th February – Megafauna
19th February – Life Cycles
26th February – Looking After The Ocean
Looking for something for the little ones instead? Fancy meeting a real mermaid?
The ‘Mermaid Tales’ sessions – geared towards Early Years-aged children – let you do just that, as the National Marine Aquarium’s resident mermaid Marina will read a short story to everybody tuned in, and the sessions will be live-streamed every Friday at 1:30pm – 1:45pm, it’s the perfect timing before an afternoon nap, or as a gentle, relaxing start to the afternoon.
National Marine Aquarium
Each of the Home Learning Sessions will also help children to feel part of the start of the global UN ‘Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development’, and will assist with home learning, whilst also providing a chance for children and their parents and teachers to gain some of the wellbeing benefits that have been proven to come from watching aquatic life.
Speaking on the launch of the Home Learning Sessions, Nicola Bridge – Head of Conservation Education and Communications at the National Marine Aquarium – said: “Despite the continued COVID-related restrictions we are all under, our suite of accessible online resources will help those home schooling get access to valuable resources and interactive activities.
“The UK is a national and global leader in marine science, and we feel ocean related teaching should therefore be an essential part of the core curriculum offering and want to help facilitate that.
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“We also want to support parents and teachers in this difficult time for everyone.
“The ocean provides half of the oxygen we breathe, drives the weather and climate and is a valuable food source for much of the world, and to look after it for future generations, we need to create an ocean literate generation – that is to say, a generation that understands the ways in which we are all inextricably connected to it, just as it is to us.”
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You can find more about the Home Learning Sessions via the National Marine Aquarium website here, and access the sessions every Friday on YouTube here.
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Pep Guardiola delivers gutting news as Man City are hit with Erling Haaland injury blow
Danny Jones
Pep Guardiola has passed on some gutting fitness news for Manchester City fans as star striker Erling Haaland is confirmed to be injured for several weeks and could even miss the rest of the Premier League season.
The title might be out of reach this year, and the Champions League knockout against Real Madrid was definitely hard for Blues to take, but with Man City into the semi-finals of the FA Cup, there’s still a very strong chance they could end 2024/25 with a piece of silverware.
However, they’ll have to make it through another two massive rounds at Wembley and seemingly the remainder of the season without Haaland and his goals, as the Catalan coach revealed that the club expects him to be out injured for “six to seven weeks.”
Not exactly how City fans would have wanted to see the rest of an already frustrating season play out.
🗣️ "We don't have another player with his skills."
Relaying diagnosis from the medical team, Pep said the hope is that the big Norwegian number nine could be back for the very tail end of the campaign, but at the very least, he “will be ready for the [FIFA Club] World Cup.”
He went on to add that “these kinds of things happen” and that he feels “sorry” for all of the other injuries that have befell his squad up till now, adding that they can only hope for a speedy recovery and for him to return as soon as possible.
The 24-year-old hasn’t had too many big injury problems in his career thus far, although his longest spell on the sidelines did come at the end of 2023 when a stress fracture kept him out until the new year.
This time around, Haaland suffered an injury to his ankle during the City’s FA Cup win over Bournemouth on Sunday following a challenge from defensive midfielder Lewis Cook.
He was forced in the second half and was seen leaving the Vitality Stadium on crutches after the game.
Erling Haaland seen leaving Bournemouth in a protective boot and crutches. 🤕
Having led the golden boot race for a good chunk of the season – as he’s become accustomed too since he arrived in England – City‘s sub-optimal season has seen him slink into second behind high-flying Mo Salah on 27, but he still has a couple dozen goals and a trio of assists to show for it.
Speaking of Salah, the soon-to-leave ‘Egyptian King’ has been the talisman for Liverpool this season, and his contributions could see them lift the trophy in Arne Slot’s first season as early as 13 April, depending on how fellow title rivals Arsenal fare in their next two matches.
As for how City round out their domestic campaign, reclaiming the FA Cup after last year’s derby disappointment looks like the main goal.
You can watch Pep Guardiola’s press conference ahead of the game against Leicester City at 19:45pm tomorrow (Wednesday, 2 April) in full HERE.
Hilarious study names Manchester as one of the UK’s most hungover cities
Emily Sergeant
Manchester has been named one of the UK’s most hungover cities, according to a hilarious new study.
Let’s be honest, we’ve all had one of those mornings – or a lot more than one, for many of us.
The kind where you wake up regretting ordering that last pint, or your decision to mix your drinks, questioning every life choice while desperately Googling ‘hangover cures that actually work’… but it turns out that some UK cities are way more prone to struggling with hangovers than others, and Manchester is one of them.
In a bid to uncover where in the country people are searching for hangover cures the most, alcohol-free beer brand Mash Gang has crunched the numbers and analysed more than 5.5 million Google searches across every city.
Manchester has been named one of the UK’s most hungover cities / Credit: Kraken Images (via Unsplash)
We always knew Manchester would be close to the top, but in this instance, we’ve actually just missed out on the number one spot, as our city has officially been ranked the second most hungover in the UK, just behind the ‘undisputed hungover capital’ itself, which is Birmingham.
According to the study, whether it’s the legendary Northern Quater or the city’s famous Gay Village, us Mancs are waking up with sore heads a lot more than anywhere else in the North.
While the North can often be underrepresented in top 10 lists, this doesn’t seem to be the case here, as other major cities such as Liverpool, Leeds, and Sheffield have all earned their place.
UK’s top 10 most hungover cities
Birmingham
Manchester
Liverpool
Bristol
Leeds
Newcastle
Sheffield
Plymouth
Coventry
Wolverhampton
It’s all according to a new survey finding the city with the most sore heads in the country / Credit: Mylo Kaye (via Unsplash)
On the other end of the scale, Ripon has emerged as the UK’s least hungover city, closely followed by Carlisle, which means that if you’re looking for a place to escape temptation, or to just find people who actually get up early on weekends, then you know where to head to.
As well as the top 10 list, Mash Gang’s analysis data also showed just how much people are looking for hangover solutions, as in just the past month alone, there have been 178,000 searches for “hair of the dog,” and the search term “hangover food” has been looked up 72,000 times in the same period.
On top of this, searches for ‘zebra striping’ – which is a method where people alternate alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks to lessen the impact of drinking – have also increased by 424% in the past quarter.
Emily Sergeant -
14th January 2021 
