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...

The Class About Everything I like

While they were off at Scout Camp, I did lesson planning for my Fall high school science class.  I am on a 4 year cycle: Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy and Physiology, and...  Well, four years ago I actually skipped a year!

The original plan was to do Physics,but I wasn't able to figure out how to do a "real" high school level Physics without a fair amount of math, and my actual students range from freshmen to seniors (actually  have a couple of 8th graders right now, also), presumably with a wide range of mathematical abilities.

I loved Physics!  But I took it in college, not in high school.  My fourth (optional) year of high school science was a very fun survey course covering four different branches of science.   I loved that class! 

So I am doing Astronomy, Geology, Oceanography/Marine Biology, and Genetics.

Somewhere in the middle of planning the classes I realized: this is actually just a class about everything I personally am fascinated with.

Yes, it does seem shamefully self indulgent to do a two hour class on cephalopods, but I think they are amazing!!  I mean, giant squid!!!

Natural History

 Last week's Adventurers was again Natural History.  We did the mammal hall, human origins, and the ocean hall.

What's not to like about glowing jars of weird stuff in a dimly lit corner?




And here is Choclo doing his best penguin impression!




And here is everyone's second favorite giant squid (the really big one is in a very long horizontal case).

But the real surprise was the birds!  I've been to this museum probably a dozen times in the last 5 years, but I hadn't seen the birds.

Oob loves birds, and was disappointed in the lack of feathers in Mammal Hall, so I told him we would find the birds. I had a vague idea they were on the bottom floor.

We discovered two things.

 One, the birds are tucked away in two dead end hallways in the basement.

Two, they are not "birds of the world" the way Mammal Hall is "mammals of the world."

They were something much better!  They were samples of every single bird found in this area in the last 150 years!

As a novice bird watcher, it was fantastic!  I have a fancy searchable bird app with pictures and songs, but there is truly nothing like seeing all the sparrows in the area next to each other, holding still.  Seeing them together, it's quite obvious that the song sparrow is the one with the gray cap and the house sparrow has just a gray stripe.

There were glass cases for song birds, another for owls, another for ducks, for eagles and vultures, for heron like birds... all with tags explaining where and when they might be seen.  It was a beginning birders paradise!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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...

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!!!!

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.

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?!?

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!