Category: Ocean

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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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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Science-Sea Creatures Part 1

11/1/2015

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Science can be a bit scary to teach but it can be so fascinating! For science, we use Apologia! We've used this curriculum since we began homeschooling and it is excellent! Jeannie Fulbright does just an incredible and thorough job with both the outline and the presentation of the curriculum. There are many different "helps" to assist in the class whether its a journaling notebook, lapbook, experiments or just using "Pinterest" for ideas from other families!

Here is the textbook and Journal we use:

Apologia Science is one of the main academic classes we have at our local homeschool co-op. In the past at the co-op, we've used Botany, Astronomy, Zoology, Physical Science and we just keep coming back to it...because it is fantastic! I love that it is written so well and has the "Creation Confirmation" inserts throughout to assure the kids about how Amazing and Intelligent our Creator is. He carefully and precisely made each and every animal.
(some of them are crazy cool too...I especially love those cute manatees)

~This year, grades 1-4 are using Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day, 5-6th are using
Human Anatomy and Physiology, 7th is using General Science and 8th and up are using Biology.~

I am teaching the 3rd Graders Zoology 2 Sea Creatures and it is so fun! I team up with the 2nd and 4th grade teachers (who are super creative and gifted I might add) to put together a fantastic syllabus to follow for the 27 weeks of classes we have. We cover approximately 1 chapter over a 2 week period (so just 2 classes per chapter since we only meet on Fridays) with minimal homework for the kids to do at home. Our classes are PACKED full of fun!

But first, before the amazing study of sea creatures can begin, it's helpful to start collecting fun resources to use during the year.

Here are some books we've collected (using library books are great too...and FREE):

And other neat and fun resources, prizes, and fun class activities. Below is a Melissa and Doug floor puzzle (link is located at the bottom of this post) I found at our local teacher supply store and an Ocean Adventure DVD which talks about the Nature of God and His magnificent design (we are super excited to watch this in the upcoming weeks).

We also collected various stuffed animals, small plastic sea creature figures (we found them on Amazon...check out the link at the bottom of the page) and some super neat stickers that we've used in lots of our class folder activities.

Stay tuned for part 2 and part 3 of Sea Creatures Science where I'll go more in-depth on our class research notebook, folder activities, chapter 1 bottle craft, our walrus craft, and TADPOLES!