Ocean Project, Part the Second

 After cutting and coloring ocean creatures, I remembered that we had loads of actual ocean things in the museum.

I pulled them out and cleared some space.





I love having a corner for exploring with a magnifying glass!

 And here's where things started to get silly.

You may recall that I like to have ocean creatures hanging on my ceiling.

Well, I still do. 





I wonder what the Emperor and the boys will think of this when they get back?

I love the angler fish!


There's also an eel, a kind of creepy jellyfish, and a rather sad looking blue whale (not to scale).


Oh yes, and an actual puffer fish  hanging from the ceiling (not too close to any of the balloon animals).

 And, if you're wondering, we also did the penguin tea party!

Who let that shark in there?

The Ocean Project, Part the First

With the Emperor and the older boys off at camp, I polled the rest of the kids: what would be your perfect day?

I got all sorts of answers: eating pizza, time with me, uninterrupted time to work on an audiobook,  a penguin tea party, doing the ocean project. 

The ocean project? 

It took me a while, but this was what they meant!  It's a porthole made of two paper plates.

You spray paint  the back of one plate, then cut out the center.

We used watercolor on the background plate, then filled it with stickers of sea creatures and tissue paper seaweed.

 Then we arranged them as portholes along the wall. 

Super cute and easy peasy!

 Maybe too easy, they wanted more!








I printed out creatures to cut and color from Learning Page.

Learning page actually has a printable mural background, but our walls are already blue.

Also, we were more interested in making the creatures we liked the colors we liked than slavish accuracy a more realistic approach.

By now we were having too much fun to stop... but I'll tell you about that tomorrow!

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.

Sea Week: Bubbly

 It's been a rough few weeks and months.  Lots of people in the hospital (my father in law's dad is in now), a few deaths (three in the past week), the strokes, and various sickness.

And the loss of our own little one.

One reason I did Sea Week last week (and into this week) was to give the kids something to focus on beyond all the heavy stuff.

Here are Klenda and Zorg making the shark.

Here is Mxyl putting up the squid's mantle.

It's amazing having kids big enough to reach the ceiling!

 Remember the bubble painting?

I finally got around to using those in a collage!

We cut out bean shapes, with a large hole on one end (Mary's face) and a smaller hole lower down (Baby Jesus' face).

The kids glued the bean shape to other paper, then drew the faces.

This was a simple, sweet craft that worked well for a wide spread of ages.  Mxyl (top) did a detailed face using proportions he learned in a portraiture video, Choclo did a smiley face (and made Baby Jess say, "Goo!").

We did it on the Feast of the Assumption.

I had providentially stumbled across these foam sea life stickers while excavating perusing the home school room.  We used the extra bubble paintings as a back ground for under sea scenes.

Klenda's was the most elaborate.  She cut orange bubbles for sand, blue for water, and an edge piece for the dolphins jumping out of the water!

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.

Beach!

 This was the first year we had three swimmers, so we had to get another boogie board.

Zorg found one with a big black panther on it, Klenda had a blue one (her favorite color) and Mxyl had the adult sized one, so everyone was happy!

Feeling extra adventurous, I borrowed a board and braved the waves with them.  Just as I remembered: icy water, threatening swells and the ever present danger that something might grab your toes.  I loved it!

Most of the time, I spent playing "Chase It, Chase It, Chase It, Run Away, Run Away, Run Away" with the younger kids and the waves.



Then it was time to warm up on the sand, so we made a bunch of merfolk.  Lovely and mysterious, aren't they?

This is why the beach is my favorite place to be.

Thanks for taking us, Mom!

Ocean!

We had a great vacation! Every morning at the crack of dawn, Oob would wake us up and get us out of bed.


Off we would go to the beach (a block and a half walk).




We spent a lot of time chasing waves, looking for shells and digging.








This was the first year we had three confident swimmers, and they had a marvelous time!













Choclo loved to play in the waves.



Oob preferred digging in the big sand box, but he liked the water if the Emperor played with him!









Leena and Klenda were mermaids.

We found lots of shells and a very strong jetty. (Why so strong? It was covered with mussels...)

We also had a great time at the beach house.

We had brought the Eyeclops (a portable microscope that plugs into a TV), and we looked at all the shells and sand and other things we found at the beach.


We did a few experiments, mostly looking at sand and shells reacting to vinegar. We determined that most of the sand was composed of rock.

I had hoped to do a bunch of stuff with seaweed (we had found 5 kinds of seaweed at this beach last year), but we couldn't find any!

I had wanted to see if we could find plankton, but we never got the Eyeclops and the seawater together while it was fresh.

I did bring back some sea water to do density and salinity experiments, but I haven't gotten to it yet...

Thursday, we visited this very cool shipwreck museum on Fenwick Island and ended up talking to the owner, Dale Clifton. As it turned out, he was the one who had actually collected all the stuff we were looking at!

He let us hold a fork he'd recovered from the Titanic and a gold chain made for the Queen of Spain in the early 1600s. After we had all held it, he casually mentioned that the chain was worth three quarters of a million dollars. Wow!

The museum is a fantastic set up that really shows the history and the science behind the treasure seeking. I loved this quote describing his first find (from his website) "I picked up the small, blackened disc from the sand and gently rubbed at its surface. There looking back at me was the image of King George III of England. I had found my first treasure - the stuff dreams are made of! To actually hold in my hand one of these legendary coins and know that the last person to touch it had died over 195 years ago, on a stormy night on September 1, 1785, was an extraordinary feeling. This was truly a gift from the sea."

We also got some new shells for our museum while we were there (the museum is on the top floor of Sea Shell City), as well as a nice big (dried) porcupine fish.

We did a few other nice things: we visited a Japanese steak house.

And we built (and demolished) a gingerbread house!

Mostly we relaxed. We spent a lot of time comfortably doing nothing in particular. We enjoyed our Grammy and each other.

It was the perfect vacation!

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.

Sarcastic Fringeheads

We are doing an ocean themed mini unit right now. Pictures and details later, but for now, enjoy this:

Something Fishy

Something fishy around here. Honestly, I don't have Christmas lights up year round, just when we have a baby! You can see Klenda's clown fish, Zorg's Puffer fish and Mxzl's turtle here along with some seaweed. More fish are arriving daily. I guess it's as close as we get to "school"-at-home!

Besides our favorite sea creatures, we've been interested in the different animals found at different depths. Hence our stairwell. The anglerfish are at the bottom and the surface dwellers are at the top. I love the orcas! Klenda made the adult and Zorg made the baby.Continuing the watery theme, we did a little play illustrating the water cycle. I haven't done a play before, but it was fun! I found it (and tons of other resources) on Enchanted Learning. But, of course, no home school ocean educational expedition would be complete without edible sea slugs (and other denizens of the deep sculpted free form from cookie dough).
Still, my favorite discovery today was that Brain Pop has a new movie on Giant Squids!!!!