Sea Week: The Return of the Squid

 It's been a long time since we've had a squid in the house!

This time, for sea week, we had two teams: Squid Team and Shark Team.

Yes, I did have an illegal amount of fun calling out, "Squid Team!"

Squid Team built this life sized model of a giant squid!

Squid Team roll call: Mxyl, Leena, and Oob.

It's really hard to take a picture of anything 50 some feet long indoors.

The mantle alone is ten feet, it's arms are 20 feet long (orange), it's tentacles are 40 feet (red), and it's eyes are the size of dinner plates - no, wait, they are dinner plates!

Shark Team built this life sized model of a young Great White shark!

Shark Team roll call: Klenda, Zorg, and Choclo.

Our shark was only 10 feet long and about 5 feet wide at it's widest point (counting fins)

I found it astonishing that they were able to sketch out the shark with no input from me besides finding a book with a shark picture!

Naturally, the shark and squid had to be locked in mortal combat, because, you know, they were right there!

Since we were sticking sea life to the ceiling, we made an assortment of fanciful balloon fish to feed them keep them company.

How we home school

I think a big part of how you home school has to do with why you home school. We home school in order to allow each child to become the person God created them to be. We are interest led with an emphasis on fun. We do have certain musts: math and learning to read and write, but we are very flexible in terms of how and when they get it. We also tend to be really immersed in what we are interested in. Our high tides tend to be a week a month or a day dedicated to a particular topic (often a requested topic). We subscribe to the tidal homeschooling philosophy, with times of high and low tides.

A memorable example would be Squid Day. We built a life size model of a giant squid (where do you display a 60 ft model of a squid? On the ceiling of 4 rooms!), looked at books and internet resources, colored pictures of squid anatomy, made playdoh squids, did ink and waterjet experiments, squid math (7 squids each with 8 arms and 2 tentacles...) and who could forget the squid puppets!!! We had to put up a squid crossing sign on our front door...the giant squid started at the front door.

That's about as high as the tide comes in around here - must have been a full moon!

More Squid!

Continuing my quest to keep you up to date on breaking squid news: the colossal squid they are thawing in New Zealand was found to have the largest eye of the animal kingdom! It would have been 40cm across when the animal was alive - the size of a beach ball!! This knocks the giant squid off it's pedestal, the giant squid's eyes are only the size of a dinner plate.

More details here. But, if I may correct the article, 495 kg is NOT 78 lbs. No lightweight squids here!

495 kilograms = 1 091.2882 pounds! (HT: Google calculator)

And they think other Colossal squid may be up to 700 kg...

Who would Win, a Giant Squid or a Great White Shark?

 Finding out now on my ceiling!

As part of our Oceanography class, we did one class on sharks, and made a life sized (19 foot) model of a Great White.

We put it up on the ceiling because it was the only clear space to put it.

Then we did the very next class on squid!

 Well, cephalopods, anyway.

It was a great class!

And, of course, we made a life sized giant squid...

And, of course, they are now fighting it out on my ceiling!

UPDATE: Giant Squid Wins!  Seriously, the shark fell off the ceiling last night, leaving only the squid...

Seven Quick Takes Friday

The Squid Fact Edition
(Why? Because I like squids. And my kids like squids.
Also, I think squids are proof that God is waaaaaay more creative than we ever imagine.)

1. Giant squids have green blood because their blood is built around a copper instead of iron.

2. Giant squids smell like cleaning fluid because they are full of ammonia. This makes them float if they don't swim (as opposed to the little ammonia-free squids which sink). It also makes them taste really bad. Just say NO to giant calamari. Interestingly, giant squids' major predators are sperm whales. These whales have no taste buds, so the ammonia doesn't bother them.

3. Squids, like octopus, can change the color, pattern, and the texture of their skin! Even better, many squids have bioluminescence: they can make their patterns light up in different colors. They are even able to change from bright pin points of light to a diffuse glow. Some squids seem to actually produce enough "wattage" to make their own search light!

4. Squids have no backwards or forwards. They can rapidly move by jet propulsion in any direction. They pull water in to their mantle, then shoot it out through their funnel.

5. Squids have the largest nerve cells in the animal kingdom. They are actually used as a model to study the human nervous system. These giant nerve cells give squids the fastest reaction time in the animal kingdom!

6. When squids swallow, their food passes straight through their brain. It's a hazard of having your head in the middle, I guess. Their brain is shaped like a doughnut, and the esophagus goes through the middle.

7. Squids are immune to nerve gas. No kidding! Researchers noticed that squids have the unique enzymes needed to break down the components of nerve gas, so they gassed a squid, and the squid was fine.

Extra bonus: You can make a life size model of a giant squid and hang it on your ceiling! But then, people will think you are nuts.

More quick takes (but probably not more squid) with Jen!

Stalking the Giant Squid

Kate, this one's for you and your princess!

The truth is, catching an entire giant squid on film is extremely difficult. A giant squid in your house presents different challenges than one in the wild. In this case, since he was taking up 4 rooms, I couldn't get him all in one shot. Here is his tail.




And his mantle.

And here is the rest of him, except, of course, it's not.
There are 8 20' orange streamers which are his arms and 2 40' red streamers which are his tentacles. You can just barely see his eyes and the siphon is invisible.

The black cords are actually Christmas lights hung over the baby's cradle (adds interest!) and you might be able to make out the other stuff on the ceiling (body traces of my kids dressed as super heroes swimming with the squid). The arms and tentacles curve off to the left into the dining room and then on into kitchen. The squid can reach all the way around my house to scratch his tail!

Click on the last picture for a larger view.

Oceans!

We got a ton of books and videos from the library. I highly recommend Oceans for Every Kid. In fact, I want to look into that series. We also were looking at these websites:
games and activities , more games, more activities, and short videos.

We took out the Big Roll of Paper and made a vertical mural showing the zones of the ocean and a horizontal one showing food webs. I think that last one could be summarized as, "Everyone finds small squid tasty."

We took out a ton of books and videos from the library. We also were looking at these websites: <a href="http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/lc/activities/default.aspx">games and activities </a>, <a href="http://www.senseofwondersite.com/Games.asp">more games</a>,<a href="http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/beach-activities.htm"> more activities</a>, and <a href="http://www.neok12.com/Oceans.htm">short videos</a>. We took out the Big Roll of Paper and made a vertical mural showing the zones of the ocean and a horizontal one showing food webs. I think that last one could be summarized as, "Everyone finds small squid tasty." Researching the zones we discovered these interesting facts. There are 5 basic zones: sunlit (surface to 200 meters), twilight (200 to 1500 meters), midnight (1500 to 4000 meters), abyss (4000 to 6000 meters) and hadral or trench (6000 to 11000 meters). Some people roll the bottom 3 together and just call it midnight because there isn't any light from the sun there. Here's the neat part: 90% of the water in the ocean is in those bottom 3 zones (1500 to 11000 meters) BUT plants can only survive in the sunlit zone, so 90% of the life in the sea is in those top 200 meters! If you take a look, that's 90% of the life in something less than 2% of the water! We also made fish balloons and hung them from the ceiling. My favorite was the angler fish, but the squid attacking the eel was a close second.
Researching the zones we discovered these interesting facts. There are 5 basic zones: sunlit (surface to 200 meters), twilight (200 to 1500 meters), midnight (1500 to 4000 meters), abyss (4000 to 6000 meters) and hadral or trench (6000 to 11000 meters). Some people roll the bottom 3 together and just call it midnight because there isn't any light from the sun there.

Here's the neat part: 90% of the water in the ocean is in those bottom 3 zones (1500 to 11000 meters) BUT plants can only survive in the sunlit zone, so 90% of the life in the sea is in those top 200 meters! If you take a look, that's 90% of the life in something less than 2% of the water! If this poster were to scale, the trench zone (shown as a dark line on the bottom) would be on the basement floor.

A submarine became necessary. We just cut it out of cardboard and spray painted it.

We also made fish balloons and hung them from the ceiling. My favorite was the angler fish (which deflated before I got a picture), but the squid attacking the eel was a close second.

Natural History

Last week we went to the Natural History Museum with the whole crew.

I know the megalodon jaws have always been there, because I'm pretty sure I've taken this picture before.   

But I had no memory of their fabulous collection of trilobites!  I don't know if these are here because the dinosaur and early life exhibit is closed, or if they've always been here.  I suppose "always" is relative with fossils!

But, seriously, if your mental picture of a trilobite is smooth and "roly-polyish", take a look at this Ordovician personality!

I didn't get to look at them as long as I would have liked because Oob was tugging on my arm, "Moooom!  I need to see the giant squid!  I'm dyyyyyying to see the giant squid! No, really, I might diiiiiiiie if I don't see it right noooooooow!"

Well, you know how I feel about squids, so we went to take a look.  Their main squid is a young female, not too large, only about 35 feet when they got her.  But still... it's a lot of squid!

Then it was on to the gems and minerals.  I'm not a huge fan of the gems.  The Hope diamond is nice and all, but I really prefer the crystals and minerals.  I'm just not a jewelry person (except for my wedding ring and my Dominican medal).  I did like seeing Marie Antoinette's earrings, though.

The minerals, on the other hand, are just gorgeous!  There are thousands of them in this gallery, packed into cases like this one, each more fascinating than the last!

The mineral gallery ends in a mock up of a mine which just happens to be based on the mine we love to visit in NJ!  We spent quite a while playing with this large magnetic rock.

And then they have a large collection of meteorites (including one from Mars which they let you touch!) and some interesting forms of erosion, like this "pot hole" which Leena is sticking her head inside.

We also discovered that they have a special hands on gallery for teens, something we haven't seen in other museums.  Unfortunately, we didn't find it until near the end...so we'll have to come back!

The Infamous Giant Squid

We made the giant squid mostly out of paper and streamers. I have a roll of white butchers paper 4' wide and a zillion miles long. The mantle and head together were 20' long and about 2-3' wide because we taped it to the ceiling so that it would bulge out in 3D. The eyes are the size of dinner plates, so we traced our plates. The siphon was a rolled up piece of paper inserted through a slit where the mantle met the head. The arms were 20' of orange streamers and the tentacles were 40' of red streamers with paper suction pads on the ends. Since squids, like octopi, have chromataphores and can change colors and patterns at will (very rapidly), everyone colored the mantle as they pleased!

Interesting squid facts:

Do you know that when squids swallow, their food passes through their brains on the way to their stomachs?

Their blood is green because it's copper based instead of iron based!

Little squids sink if they aren't swimming, big squids float if they don't swim!

They float because they are full of ammonia!

You can't eat a giant squid because it tastes like floor cleaner, but a sperm whale can because it has no taste buds!

The only reason we know about these huge squids is because they float when they die. What else could be down there that we don't know about?!?

Seven Quick Takes Friday

The Parenting/Parents/Squid Edition

1. Oob is a really-o truly-o 2 1/2. You can tell because when you call his name, he answers with a cheerful, "NO!"

2. Here's an easy way to learn to control your temper. Whenever I raise my voice, Choclo pleads, "Please don't be angry, Mommy!" in a voice which sounds as if I have been beating him with chains. It's a good reminder for me that words can hurt, too.

3. Through an odd confluence of medical issues, we are in the throes of potty training Choclo and Oob at the same time. My feelings on this are not helped by the fact that Choclo constantly tells me that he is 8 years old (especially since it does feel like he's been potty training for 8 years). You might think having lots of kids makes you an expert. Nope. It just means you've survived. I did find Jen's most recent post absolutely hilarious and very encouraging!

4. I loved our visit to my folks so much, but I am really enjoying my programmable thermostat. It's easy to forget what heating the house with coal involves. If you've only done a wood fire, all I can say is that coal is much harder to start, tricky to keep going, and very, very heavy. But it is way warmer than wood, and, once you have the skill, you can keep it going over night.

5. Have I mentioned that my parents are rugged? They are. They don't have a dishwasher!! I remember begging them (as a kid) to get a dishwasher. Every single time my Mom would look at me quizzically and ask, "Why? I already have three dishwashers?" (meaning my brother, sister and me). Have I mentioned that I am now spoiled? I am.

6. Just in case I'm making it sound like my parents are Luddites, they also have laptops and cell phones. And indoor plumbing. And quirky senses of humor.

7. Speaking of quirky, I got 3 great book for Christmas: Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, and The Search for the Giant Squid by Richard Ellis. Which reminds me, If you've noticed that squids can move with equal speeds backward and forward, I'm sure you've wondered how squids can shoot forward with their legs all pointed stiffly in front of them. I mean, going "backwards" their legs trail behind them, sure, but forwards? It turns out they can stick their suckers together like snaps! How cool is that? I'll have to do a whole post (or two) about all the cool stuff I'm learning about squid.

Dissections!

 Choclo and Oob have been really enjoying their dissections.

So far, this semester, we've done a cow eyeball, a sheep kidney, an earthworm, a crayfish, and a squid. 

Stay tuned, we have many, many more waiting in a box in my office!

We start out by looking at the outside of the specimen, finding all the parts, and wondering why things are the way the are.

The big question on the cray fish was, "Why is it's armor so spiky?"

We talked about that, and about why it had armor, and how it grew.

My favorite part of the crayfish dissection is the gills.  Those feathery things hanging out are the gills, and every one of them is attached to a leg. 

As the legs move, they move the gills through the water flowing under the carapace.  It would be like us having our lungs attached to our legs so that the faster we ran, the faster we breathed!

And, of course, I loved the squid dissection!

The only disappointment was that the preservation process had solidified the ink.

But I had not realized that each of the squid's gills were attached to it's hearts!  Very cool!

Here Choclo and Oob are looking at the suckers.

I like to use a big magnifying glass with the dissections.

 I also like to keep a few empty slides available so that we can look at things like the gills under the microscope. 

Also, in preparation for each dissection, I like to look up a video on the web.  Biology by Me is my very favorite.  He explains things very clearly and concisely, while adding interesting details.

Chomp Chomp

 We have started off Adventuring again!

Last week we went off to the Natural History museum to the Ocean Hall to round off our Sea Week.  Yes, weeks do contain varying numbers of days around here!

We parked near the sculpture garden and wandered through.

The Zoomlians all wanted to stop and sketch - why not?  There's nothing like a new box of colored pencils!

The favorite ocean thing we saw was a tie between their preserved giant squid, and these reproduction megalodon jaws (with real fossil teeth!).

Our squid is bigger than theirs, but their shark teeth were definitely bigger ours!  But we have less of a budget...

They also had no less than five preserved angler fish - one of Choclo's favorites.

 We looked a bit at the dinosaur fossils and then went up to their insect zoo, a perennial favorite.

We have been there at three or four different tarantula feeding times over the years, and we've never seen one actually eat. The keeper explained that they can go weeks without eating, partly because they don't move around much.

Or this one likes crickets, but just as friends. 

But, of course, the big draw is the bugs they let you hold!

This is Choclo getting ready to hand off an unnaturally  freakishly very large grasshopper off to Oob.

Shark Day

I've decided I've gotten into too much of a rut with my homeschooling. I want to go back to doing tons of cool stuff, so I asked the kids what they wanted to learn about.

Leena said, "Sharks!" So in the line of the infamous Squid Day, we had Shark Day. This is Leena's picture.

We started off with some shark websites. We liked Enchanted Learning a lot. This shark page was free! This page had great pictures. I also found a page with lots of printables: a wordsearch, maze, shark anatomy sheet, and one graphing shark sizes.

After the websites we did a packet of those printables, then read some library books: an Eyewitness Shark book and another really great one I can't remember.

I pulled our shark jaw out of the museum so we could look at exactly how all those rows of teeth work. Since the jaw is cartilage, we talked quite a bit about the plusses and minuses of having your skeleton be cartilage or bone.

For one thing, sharks can't really move their fins, so they can't move backwards the way a fish can. Cartilage is just too weak to support moveable fins. On the other hand, a cartilage skeleton is quite flexible and sharks can turn around really quickly... so it's really not advisable to tease a shark about not being able to swim backwards.



We moved on to an art project. My plan was to have the kids draw sharks participating in the food chain. The idea was to have them draw the animals in heavy crayon and then do a watercolor wash for the water. They had so much fun, they never got around to the wash. Here we have sharks feasting on luminescent squid.




That was the morning, and the rest of the day was spent Down by the Bay, collecting shark's teeth! I wish I had brought my camera for the actual collection.

It was the perfect day to go: too warm to be standing around turns into just perfect when you cool water lapping at your ankles! It was too early in the season for biting flies and jellyfish, and the beach wasn't crowded.

Best of all, everyone found plenty of teeth!

The Tooth Chicken Brought Me a Squid!!

How's that for a statistically improbable sentence?  Nevertheless, it's quite true.  The wiggly crown that turned into the Tooth from Heck continued to misbehave, ending with gum surgery followed by extraction yesterday.

I must admit, when the dentist told me (a while back) that I would likely lose the tooth, my first thought was to wonder what the Tooth Chicken would bring.

I've decided to call him Squiddy!

He's entirely hand sewn, and very affectionate with the children, as you can see. Either that or he's really hungry.

As Oob said, "He's sooo cuuuute!  And piiiiink!"

I haven't had a visit from the Tooth Chicken in decades, but it was worth the wait.  As long time readers know, I love squid!

(Mostly) Wordless Thursday: The Emperor and Choclo at NOAA

NOAA: National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration

Ship Simulator

Hurricane Tube

Cephalopods!  Choclo made me the cutest little squid!

2007

Our 11 Favorite things about 2007
11 The Emporer's Genealogy bonanza/ the Prime Minister's sewing streak.
10 Mxyl n' Zorg doing Scouts & Klenda n' Leena doing Super Girls Night.
9 Starting our blogs.
8 Seeing a live giant squid in its natural habitat (on film).
7 The Plutarch party.
6 Seeing almost all of our nieces and nephews and the big trip to NJ.
5 Making the gingerbread houses.
4 Choclo being 2.
3 Seeing Zorg make his First Communion and also really start to read.
2 Angel deciding to stay for another 5 years!
1 Welcoming a new Zoomlian: it was The Year of Oob!

Seven Quirky Quick Takes

1. Our beloved friend (who has been living with us while she got her master's degree) has graduated!

We gave her this beautiful bouquet of vegetables.

She really, really loves vegetables.  She was moved, and touched, and thrilled. And, before you ask, yes, she enjoyed eating them.

I wouldn't necessarily give you (gentle reader) a bouquet of vegetables, but there's something special about giving a particular person the particular thing they love.

How do you like my nose?!

2.  In other news, Choclo got his first cavity, and thus his first  filling.

Our Very Awesome Pediatric Dentist suggested we use laughing gas (nitrous oxide). This worked well: his tooth is fixed and he was not scarred for life. But.

This involved a bright orange "nose" which Choclo will not allow me to throw away.  He loves it!  He wanted pictures!  It's still on my desk 3 weeks later no matter how many times I "accidentally" knock it into the trash.

3. I had a birthday of record!

Bonus points if you can figure that out with reference to the cake.

Klenda made me her amazing tiramisu cake. Truly swoon worthy!






4.  Speaking of which, my new header is based on this picture which Klenda painted for me for my birthday.

 Actually, all the kids made me things: I got a mosaic stepping stone from Oob, a bird feeder from Choclo, a squid magnet from Leena, a ship model from Zorg, and a Japanese tea mug from Mxyl.

Best birthday ever!

You could name me "My Dog!"

5. One thing I did not get for my birthday: baby doll sheep!   

This was the sheep I was looking for at the Sheep and Wool Festival!  They only get about as big as a normal lamb, and they look like they are always smiling.

Look at that face!  How could my friendly neighborhood code enforcement officer consider him to be livestock?

(Unfortunately, if you bring him within a few yards of Grumpy Cat, you get a universe annihilating explosion.)

I get that joke a lot, actually.

6.  We made another trip up to the Aquarium.

Every time I go without the Emperor, every time, I text him a picture of a really ugly eel.

That's a moray.


7.  I didn't blog at all last week.  It was sunny, breezy, and mild (70s) with no humidity.  I tried not to step inside inside my house.

This week it's been hazy, hot (90s), and humid, so I'm back to blogging (in air conditioned splendor)! I am trying not to step outside my house this week.

Still, I love this picture of Choclo, even if it did force me to admit he needed a hair cut!

Have a great weekend!  More fun with Kelly!