Category: Sea Creatures

Sea Creatures-Mollusks

11/7/2016

Chapter 9 was all about MOLLUSKS. Mollusks are soft slimy creatures with squishy bodies. Snails and slugs are mollusks we find in our yards! The kids thought it was fascinating that mollusks MAKE their shells! When we study Hermit Crabs, we learned that they live in the shells make by these Mollusks.

Mollusks are broken down into 3 GROUPS:

Gastropods-these are snails that usually live inside a shell! They make a variety of shells in different shapes and colors. The study of shells is known as CONCHOLOGY! (except for the Nudibranch...these gastropods don't make shells at all but are very beautiful. They have many colors that glow int he dark with bioluminescents! So Amazing!
Bivalves-These Mollusks have 2 shell halves. Mussels, scallops, and clams are examples of bivalves.
Cephalopods-We'll study these in Chapter 10!

WEEK 1:

For Week one, we worked on our Notepage after reading the first half of the chapter prior to class. We passed around a variety of Mollusk shells for the kids to examine.

We then began our folder activity page. The kids matched up a variety of shells with a picture of each and a description to make a flap book of Mollusk shells.

WEEK 2:

We began this week by filling out our 2nd notebook page on Mollusks. I passed out these paper rulers from Printable-Ruler.net and the kids were able to measure the rings on each shell they were passed and decide how old the shell was.

Growth lines on Mollusks indicate age similar to the growth rings in trees. As the Mollusk grows, it builds another layer on to of the other layer, leaving rings.

This shells shows growth lines indicating the Mollusk is 3 years of age.

Lots and lots of shells for this chapter! It was fun sorting through them all and trying to figure out what kind of Mollusk it was and then how old we thought it was. Having a nice variety is really helpful!

Since we don't live by the ocean, we asked families within the co-op and found many willing to bring in shells to share with our class for observation and our Conchology Research. We had about 3 gallon sized bags full of different shells and a bunch of large ones. It was nice having the large Conch Shells & listening for the ocean!

It was really fun to also see the many shells with holes in them that the kids all immediately said were eaten by a predator. Some predators will drill holes in the shells to eat Mollusks.

There are some neat videos on youtube on Mollusks!

Happy Homeschooling!

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Sea Creatures-Crustaceans

10/27/2016

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Lobster, Shrimp, crabs, krill are all examples of crustaceans. This chapter was truly fascinating. When we can add hands-on activities in our classes, it is so much more enriching and fun!

Here a LIVE Lobster was brought in for the kids to learn and see the Anatomy. Our week 1 folder activity page was to complete a Lobster diagram. The Lobster was such an amazing visual...and yummy dinner for one of our amazing teachers.

You can find a LIVE Lobster at a local grocery store. Ours was purchased from Wegmans and they packed it up so nicely so it could stay alive and safe for the whole day at our co-op. This was very helpful.

**make sure you point out to the students that the Claws are very strong and powerful. That is why they must keep the tight bands on them to help prevent any fingers from getting injured.**

This cute Blue Crab Plush was added to our Ocean themed classroom. He was super popular amongst our plushies!

We finished out Week 1 with our Notepage on Crustaceans to follow up the kids' reading assignment from the textbook.

We had a few extra minutes at the end of class so we watch the fascinating video on the Christmas Island Red Crabs. Below is a link for a short version of one of the videos you could watch. It's quite amazing!

WEEK 2 was our first RESEARCH WEEK. I assigned each kid a different Crustacean to Research and they needed to bring back "Two Cool" facts to share with their classmates. We all recorded them onto our 2nd Folder Activity Page.

We also completed our 2nd Notebook page to finish out the chapter.

Here are the crustaceans that were assigned:

Lobster
Crayfish-these would have been fun to bring in as they are plentiful around where we live if we had studied them during a warmer season. :)
Crab
Hermit Crab
Barnacles
Shrimp
Horseshoe Crab

**Students were encouraged to share their 2 facts with the class. I wrote them on the board to help everyone have a guide when writing down the facts onto their folder activity pages.**

I hope you enjoyed the information we studied for this lesson! I'll be adding links to some of these activities soon so please be patient. Now go enjoy some yummy Lobster for dinner!

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

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Sea Creatures-Sharks & Rays

10/25/2016

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Sharks and Rays was one of those chapters the boys couldn't wait to get to. I just love the massive and beauty of the Manta Ray! We hung this cute little guy from our ceiling to add to our "OCEAN" Room.

We started out by watching some super neat videos on Manta Rays. There are a few from "Jonathan Bird's Big Blue World".

Here is one below you could watch:

We then moved onto our note page and folder activity page.

We designed our Manta Ray by hand (you can make a
quick pattern by hand if you need to) and label the parts
that we learned:

Pectoral Fin
Pelvic Fin
Nares
Mouth
Gill Slits
Tail
Dorsal Fin

We glued the back of the Ray onto our first folder page and folded in our Pectoral Fins and folded up the long tail so it all stored nicely into the folder.

The second week we did our notepage and then moved on to our Folder activity on Shark Teeth. We did have a student bring in a variety of shark teeth he had collected. The kids enjoyed passing those around and examining them.

You could also view another video on sharks if there is any time left or have the kids research different sharks. I have added a free shark stationary to use for a fun addition to your writing project.

Below is our second Folder Page for our "Sharks and Rays" Chapter.

We glued 2 standard sized pieces of yellow paper together to make a fold out.
Then we matched up the pictures and descriptions on the Shark Descriptions printout to the box on the Shark's Teeth page.
We then cut out Teeth based on the average size of the ones recorded to have been found.

These are just Average lengths:
Megalodon 7.5 inches
Great White Shark 2.25 inches
Mako Shark 2 inches
Tiger Shark 1.25 inches
Hammerhead Shark .75 inch

Click on the pics or link to download your copy of the Shark Teeth and Descriptions Files.

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

**Just a Note: Our "Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day" Research Journal Notebooking pages are not ready for purchasing or download yet.
I am sorry for any inconvenience.**

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These Ocean Life Trading Cards were a HUGE HIT!

10/24/2016

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Trading Cards are everywhere: Baseball, Football, Basketball, Pokemon, Littlest Pet Shop, etc....you name it, there are trading cards.

We purchased these at the Teachers Pay Teachers site and divided them up in our classes. The kids loved going off and trading them for their favorites. My class even asked if they could do more work to earn more trading cards! Teacher for the WIN! :)

It was a simple and fun way to close out our awesome year-long unit of Sea Animals!

Here is the link to the Teachers Pay Teachers site:

Ocean Life Trading Cards

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Thanks Apologia for an amazing homeschooling curriculum and making our year
enriching and full of ocean fun!

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

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Sea Creatures-Fish Ornament

10/23/2016

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Who doesn't love a good CRAFT!? We try to add a variety of different lessons and crafts into our science curriculum. As we moved closer to Christmas time, we found a few fun ideas for sea creature ornaments on the internet. We took a few of the ideas we found and came up with this version.

Since I kept forgetting to take pics throughout the process, I will have to walk you through it.

Here are the supplies we had on hand:

Clear Plastic Fill-able Ornaments
Plastic Sea Animal Figures
String of any kind for hanging
Blue tinted Glue (or glitter glue to add sparkle)
Yellow or any color Sand
Thin thread (for handing sea creature)
Scotch tape
Green Sharpie
Paint brush
Scissors

First thing we did was tie the sea creatures on thread long enough that we could trim the string after we were all finished up.
The kids took green sharpies to color green sea grass on the outside of the ornaments for extra affect.
We painted the inside of the ornament (you can take the ornaments apart to do this easily) with the blue glitter glue.
We were able to sprinkle some colored sand on parts of the inside bottoms of each ornament to represent the ocean floor.
Then we place the thread between the 2 open sides of the ornament (this took 2 people; one to hold both sides of the ornament and one to hold the thread in the spot where you want your sea creature to hand inside the ornament.)
Once the 2 ornament sides are snapped into place, we placed clear scotch tape over the seams to just give it an extra seal.
Last step is to put pretty string in the hole at the top of the ornament so you can hang it from your tree! (Or on your kitchen cupboard knob where mine is currently hanging, ha)

After we finished our ornament, we had a nice relaxing movie time with this DVD!
Ocean Adventures, Volume 1

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

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Sea Creatures-Aquatic Herps

11/28/2015

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There was so much information to cover for chapter 4 in only 2 weeks but we got as much in as we could!
Week one we covered a lot of the basic information from the differences between reptiles and amphibians down to the life cycles of amphibians...we saved sea turtles for week 2.

The Folder Activity we did was on the Life Cycle of Frogs. The kids had their pictures and descriptions cut out when they received them and they were suppose to glue them in the correct order onto their folder page in their research binders.

You can find this print out below by clicking on the picture!

We wrapped up week one by observing our tadpoles that we purchased at our local fish store in town. The store owner wasn't certain which type we received but I'm guessing bullfrogs because almost a month has gone by and they still look like tadpoles!!! haha...well, they'll be fun to watch even if it does take a year or two!

We purchase tadpole food and the kids are having fun seeing them week after week!

Week 2 was all about SEA TURTLES! They are just sooo incredibly fascinating! We watched a few YouTube Videos and then completed our research journal page. Then the kids worked on our folder activity on "Sea Turtles of the World" wheel.

We discussed the 7 main Sea Turtles:

Green Sea Turtle
Leatherback Sea Turtle
Loggerhead Sea Turtle
Hawksbill Sea Turtle
Kemps Ridley Sea Turtle
Olive Ridley Sea Turtle
Flatback Sea Turtle

We finished off Aquatic Herps by making our own Sea Turtles! You can find this printable HERE. I printed out the Sea Turtle parts on GREEN PAPER and the kids stapled them onto their paper plate after designing the turtle they liked best!

For the kids who finished early, they could color their "Eight Turtle of the Sea" Coloring Page!

I hope you enjoyed our study of AQUATIC HERPS! Here is a pic showing our co-op classroom wall...sorry our bottom ocean zone fell off! haha!
We added our Sea Turtles to our Ocean Zones! Hoping to have our wall filled up by the end of our
Sea Creatures Study!

Happy Homeschooling!

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Science-Sea Creatures: Whales

11/27/2015

Whales, Whales, Whales! We could spend WEEKS on whales! They are just so interesting, smart, perfectly created! The kids REALLY enjoyed them.

We did do a super fun blubber experiment...we got the idea from www.briebrieblooms.com and modified how we made the blubber bag a tad. The kids were super thrilled and amazed when they learned how warm their hands were in the ice water with the blubber packet.

Our first folder activity was on toothed and baleen whales. The kids used packing tape and straw to make baleen for their folders and glued on pre-cut shapes of teeth to represent the whale's teeth. We did this on week 1 along with the journal page and blubber experiment.

The kids also used whale pictures below to guess which whales were baleen and which ones were toothed.

Here are the Whale Folders for our class!

Over 2 weeks, we covered the Journal pages on whales and also completed our baleen and toothed whale "folder activity" page. See below (sorry I am missing the baleen....we used packing tape and straw to show a visual of our baleen works).

We finished up week 2 by going outside to measure how big whales were. We had a HUGE 100 ft. tape measure and each kiddos had a 10 ft. piece of string.

The Awesome teachers we are would stretch out our tape measure to show various average whale lengths and then the kids had to team up to match with their strings to get those same lengths. So if we measured an orca that averaged 30 feet, then 3 kids would have to match up their 10 ft. strings. Here are some of the whales we measured out:

Narwal 15 feet
Beluga 15 feet
Orca 30 feet
Gray Whale 50 feet
Humpback Whale 50 feet
Sperm Whale 60 feet
Blue Whale 100 feet

This was so fun to see how BIG some of the whales in our Seas actually grow to be! WOW...our GOD is so BIG to create such magnificent creatures as the whale! After this activity, the kids put their strings in baggies that we stapled into their folder page for whales (see pic of the folder page below).

They also got to put in a big whale sticker to go along with it (see the sticker link below...we love these stickers).

Here the kids are all stretched out with their strings across the church parking lot!

Below is a pic of the string stapled into the folders with a description of the various
whale lengths we measured outside!

These are incredible real life looking stickers...the kids LOVE picking them out and there were
enough whales for each kiddo to place
one on their folder page!

I hope you enjoyed this week on Whales! What an amazing animal God created!

Check out the other lessons on Sea Creatures to learn more!

Apologia Science-Primeval Reptiles

11/24/2015

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We completed our Chapter 5 Research Journal page in class.

We spent one week on Primeval Reptiles and had so much fun! It was very interesting to learn about the discoveries of these great creatures God created long ago and that we are unable to see with our own eyes today. This is where science comes in...even though we don't know much about them, we can make educated "guesses" on what we think they may have looked like based on evidence found from their fossils! Fascinating!

We learn much from the Bible on these as well! The Leviathan, for instance, is mentioned in the Old Testament a few times so we also read up on that. God's Word is filled with so much science! (check out Job 41 & Psalm 104) The GREAT DELUGE was a big part of our lesson to explain why these reptile's fossils have been found in weird locations like the desert and on top of mountains. Apologia does an incredible job explaining this for the kids to understand and they were filled with complete enthusiasm on this topic.

Here is our "match up" game...mine is the answer key so this one is not cut up but this is what the kids would look like if they matched them properly.

We talked about the 4 main "saurs":
Nothosaurs-"spurious lizard"

Means "Spurious Lizard"
Long neck & tail with 4 webbed feet
They can walk on land and swim
Eggs hatch on land (like a turtle)
The Lariosaurus is one type-these were thought to be around 2 ft. long.
They can range in size from 2 ft up to 20 ft.

Plesiosaurs

Long necks and turtle shaped body with no shell
Probably ovovivaparous
They had 4 flippers and up to 24 different bones in each finger!
The Elasmosaurus and Pliosaurs were a type of Plesiosaur.

Mosasaurs

These resemble sea snakes: tiny flippers and paddle shaped tails
They can range from 10 ft. up to 50 ft. long
Swallow prey whole (unhinged jaw)

Ichthyosaurs

Means "Fish Lizard"
Looks like a large fish but with a lizard skeleton
Shonisaurs were a type of Ichthyosaur

We ended our lesson by talking about what "articulated" means and how sediment can help preserve some fossils! The students each took a ball of Crayola Air Dry Clay and also one of the small sea creatures. We found that the lobster, sea horse, crab and the swordfish made AWESOME imprints. We also used plastic dinosaurs to make footprints and seashells for our fossils. We let them dry for the week and then attached these wooden tag keychains to each one (don't forget to make holes in the clay BEFORE it air dries though).

To finish them off, we printed these clear labels for each keychain!
The kids LOVE these and they were fun to make.

Here are some of the products we used for this project! We already had the plastic sea creatures from back when we made the ocean zone bottles! Click here to go to the Ocean Zone Bottle Youtube video!

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Science-Sea Creatures Part 2: Student Research Notebook

11/8/2015

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The notebooking we chose to use for our Apologia Science class was a combination of many ideas. I do use the Apologia Notebook from time to time but for our main research, we created our own using colored file folders, our own notebooking pages and a 1-inch 3-ring binder.

The cover page was one we created for the kids to personalized themselves. They had a fun time coloring them during our co-op class. We are currently in the process of teaching and making these pages for our research. We have most of them complete but once all of them are finished, we will make them available to our viewers, so stay tuned!

You will need:

1", 3-ring binder
13 colored file folders with chapter name labels
Cover page
Research Sheets
hole punch
Folder Activities (downloads coming soon)

Click HERE to watch the video or click on the video above to see how to make our
Research Journal for the Sea Creatures Class!

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Ocean Zone Bottle

11/8/2015

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This was a fun craft! We made them in our homeschool co-op class and at home! Here are the supplies that you will need:

Empty Plastic Bottle with lid
5 labels with Ocean Zones on them
2 small plastic sea creatures
Packing Table
Thread
Super Glue
Scissors
5 layers of construction Paper (Light Blue, Dark Blue, Purple, Brown, and Black)

Click HERE to see the video on how to make these! A GREAT addition to your
Sea Creatures or Ocean Study!

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<<Previous

Sea Creatures-Mollusks

Sea Creatures-Crustaceans

Sea Creatures-Sharks & Rays

These Ocean Life Trading Cards were a HUGE HIT!

Sea Creatures-Fish Ornament

Sea Creatures-Aquatic Herps

Science-Sea Creatures: Whales

Apologia Science-Primeval Reptiles

Science-Sea Creatures Part 2: Student Research Notebook

Ocean Zone Bottle

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