Dolphins! (and Sharks!) with MGT

Monday morning we started our Mother Goose Time activities by matching up some of our dolphin figurines to the pictures in our Animal Encyclopedia book. Mr A did very well. We also compared the different dolphins by finding some with the same colors, one with no dorsal fins and some with similar patterns.

Mr A got out the pattern strip and quickly finished and extended the pattern using the photo cards provided. He repeated the ABCC pattern several times and then made up his own patterns. Mr Z helped a tiny bit too.

 

Wednesday, we learned about Sharks. We started with making our Shark Fin craft provided by MGT. The boys spread glue on the triangular fin. Mr A made shapes and Mr Z spread his with a brush. They added black and blue sand to make it feel rough.

After the glue dried, I added popsicle sticks and we played Shark. While singing the Jaws theme song "da da, da da, da da"... we pretended to be sharks and chase the others that did not have the fins. We were chased by the shark all over the house.

We played with our shark babies. We learned the different ways that sharks can have babies: in an inside of the body, in an egg outside the body, or give birth to live babies. We used our shark figurines as our babies and put them in a pouch for the egg sack. We saved our babies from Angler fish, eels and Manta rays.

Mr A lined up the shark baby figurines and photo cards. He said they were helping fight off the Manta Rays while we played baseball with a plastic bat and Angler fish dog toy and saved the shark babies from the mean angler fish coming from the abyss.

The boys looked at our shark books for quite awhile. One of the books had a cardboard model of a shark. I put it together and they took turns playing with it for a little bit.

From the Extra Materials tab in the Member Resources on the website, I printed these shark mouths. We filled the teeth with Fruit Loops and rolled the die to see how many to eat. Then we replaced the teeth several times and kept playing till all the cereal was gone. Mr A learned that when a shark looses a tooth a new one grows in its place.

The dogs were trying to steal some of the cereal too.

Wyatt the Whale

Today was such a fun day with Mother Goose Time. We learned about Whales! We also introduced one of our friends to MGT and she had a blast doing activities with us.

We learned about the blowhole of the whale and it is actually more like the whale's nose. The spray that we see when one surfaces, is the "used-up" air that the whale previously inhaled through the blowhole. The warm air that was in the lungs meets the cold air of the atmosphere and makes a vapor- the spray. Sometimes, there is also mucus blown from the blowhole, since it is its nose after all.

The kids used straws to blow bubbles in tubs of water. In one of them, I put a few drops of soap and they liked watching the bubbles form as they blew through their straws. The kids experimented with different size straws. We figured out, that the different sizes still make about the same bubbles. Mr A blew on some flowers with his straw. Also, leaves, some fuzz and grass was blown. None of the kids could blow a rock with the straw to make it move though.

Our craft today was a fun one. Whale Blowing Art. Mother Goose Time provided a whale cutout, straws and a sticker eye. We used liquid watercolor with glitter in it for our paint medium. The older kids practiced using an eyedropper to squeeze the colors of paint that they wanted onto their whale. As an extra paint project, I printed out a whale picture from the extra member resources section online.

Mr A figured out very quickly that you get more control and can move the paint better if the end of the straw is closer to the paper/paint.

We talked about the size of whales and demonstrated  that a Beluga whale is about 14 sheets of paper long. Everyone helped line up the papers and helped write the numbers on each page. We measured each other using the papers and compared ourselves to the Beluga whale. We took turns jumping from number one to the end and counted how many jumps it took each of us to get there.

Learning about Baleen whales with sand, a toothbrush and our Letter Set and hands-on letter Ww. The kids had a great time feeling the sand and wiping of the Letter W card with the "baleen". Some whales have bristles like a toothbrush to sift their food while they take in water. The sand acted as the plankton and whale food sifting through the toothbrush's bristles. Mr A needed to match the hands-on letters to the letters on the card too.

Quickly, we looked at the anatomy of the whale. We compared the whale to the human and found the lungs, spine and ribcage in each. Whales breathe air like us and have a ribcage to protect them. We also learned that sometimes the blowhole can make a sound. Air sacs under the blowhole can make a sound similar to that of air being released from a balloon. So, I blew up some balloons and we listened to the noise of the air as it quickly exited the balloon. The kids thought it was funny.

Did you know:
An Orca is actually a dolphin. Its in a sub-category of a sub-category in a class 'delphinidae'. The Orca is the largest of the dolphin species.
Dolphins are whales but not all whales are dolphins.
The Whale shark is a shark, not a whale.
The Narwhal's tusk is actually a canine tooth (usually on the left side of the jaw) that protrudes from the upper lip. 1 in 500 males have two 'tusks'. The can grow up to 10 feet in length.

Oh- and our new letter friend is named Wyatt. He's a whale that likes the letter W. I forgot to add the photos him.
 

An InLinkz Link-up

Sea World Scavenger Hunt

After learning about Oysters and pearls the other day with our Mother Goose Time curriculum, I told Mr A that he could pick out his own pearl from a real oyster from Sea World. He was most excited about this on our visit today. He used Hawaiian chopsticks to pick out his Hawaiian Oyster from the pot. He stirred and stirred until he found the perfect one. Mr A put it on the special tray and tapped on his oyster 3 times saying "one, two, three, ALOHA!" I guess its supposed to bring luck to your pearl?

The lady opened the oyster with a special knife, dug around and revealed Mr A's pearl. It has a gold pink hue, which represents beauty and prosperity. His pearl is a good size at about 7mm. He's very excited about his real pearl and we have to decide on a special place to keep it so it doesn't get lost.

I brought the extra set of daily focus pictures that I received this month and we went on a small scavenger hunt for some of the pictures. We didn't get very far, since we went with friends, and the kids enjoyed being together... meaning I didn't bother with the scavenger hunt for too long. But we did find a few things before we/I gave up.

Sea Stars. These ones in the tidepools were Bat Sea Stars, because they have a webbing between each arm. The boys didn't want to touch them because the water was too cold. lol. I liked the sea star pictured below that has 6 arms instead of 5, like the one above.

We found a "shipwreck". This was part of a water ride that we won't go on.

One of Mr Z's favorite things are the sea turtles.

We found a "coral reef" in one of the aquariums.

Mr Z also loves the dolphins. This was a mom and baby pair.

Mr A was relaxing with the polar bear.

We like the Beluga whale too. He was actually doing a weird "worm dance" on the bottom of his tank. Maybe scratching an itch?

In the Sea turtle aquarium were large schools of fish. We like looking at those and the different sizes of the turtles.

I feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to live in area with so many places to visit that are fun and educational... if you make them that way. We've been to Sea World several times but today we went as a field trip. On our next visit we will try to find more animals from our unit. I like having membership passes so that we don't have to do everything in one day. We can do a little bit at a time.
What a fun way to make this Ocean Commotion unit come alive for the kids. I love having so many field trip options so close. I wish everyone could have these experiences too.

Ocean Plants with MGT with Additional Activities

Mr Z and I started this morning with using our Shape Design Mats and Shape Manipulatives provided by Mother Goose Time with kinetic sand, aquarium plants and sea animal figurines. We made an underwater sea city. He used the plastic shapes to make an octopus cave, he dug with them and buried the triangles.

Then we added some plants and animals to the shapes and sand.

While doing errands this morning, we took a field trip to the pet store to look at some live water plants in the tanks.

When we got home we used a clear bin to make another underwater ocean... particularly a representation of the Sunlit Zone. Aquarium plants and animal figurines are being utilized a lot this month!

The boys played for quite some time!

We looked at pictures on the computer of ocean plants, animals in the different ocean zones and diagrams of what the zones look like.

We even found a picture similar to the one on our focus picture for the day.

After looking a computer photos, I set up a simple diagram of the Midnight, Twilight and Sunlit ocean zones. I let Mr A sort our cards provided by MGT into the zones he thought they belonged in. He changed his mind for a few of them a couple of times.

Mr A and Mr Z gathered some of their favorite sea animal pictures from the wall and drew pictures on their "Draw and Dictate" sheets. I helped Mr Z draw a Tiger Shark. Mr A tried to copy the picture of a sea horse.

Mr A's story is titled Scary Sea Horse and is as follows: Sea horses do everything. They have good eyesight. They eat sharks and every fish and puffer fishes. He has sharp claws on his belly.
I think he dictated some of these things in his story to me because, while looking at photos on the computer, we also watched a few video clips and one was about sharks. Some of the info is what was said on the video.

We tried a science experiment. Although, I didn't use the right liquids for it to work properly. We attempted to make Ocean Zones in a Bottle. I used corn syrup mixed with purple Kool-aid for the Midnight Zone. We poured in olive oil and then water into the bottle. Mr A did like watching the corn syrup slowly move through the bottle. But, there are not three different layers in our bottles. The boys liked shaking them and getting the different liquids to mix. The oil and corn syrup separated nicely though.

Today was about Ocean Plants and the different zones of the ocean. Mr A says his favorite activity today was making our experiment: Ocean Zones in a Bottle.