Whales

We learned a little about whales this morning!

First, we learned that whales are either Baleen or Toothed.

We sorted our whales into their correct category.

Then we learned a little bit about each.

Did you know that Baleen Whales eat tiny little plankton?

like this?

Let me show you HOW they eat…

Check this out! 

We learned about parts of a whale, including blubber!

We (of course) had to do the blubber experiment.

We covered one of our hands in Crisco and dipped both in ice water.

…and counted to 5.

The girls loved it so much they did it like 5 times :)

My printer was out of ink (go figure) so I drew an orca on the board to label.

The girls helped me label the parts they remembered.

All done!

Charlotte drew a whale and wrote a sentence (near the word wall)

while Adelyn did her reading lesson.

"Whales have blowholes. When they come out of the water they blow water and air."

Sometimes phonetic spelling is easy to read.  Other times… ;)

The girls decided to play with some word study stuff!

After nap time, Charlotte continued with her reading rods.

We love word-play!

Ocean Zones

I've been finding these creatures all over my loft.  

My girls LOVE wikki stix and they've been creating sea creatures with them in the spare time :)

Sea Star 

Sea Horse

Jellyfish

 We started today with a story.

I had words within the story that the girls had to find.

Adelyn and Charlotte both did pretty well with this!

On to the real topic of the day!

We read "Wish for a Fish" today and used an idea I found.

"Wish for a Fish introduces ocean zones.

We used another non-fiction text also!

Using construction paper, I let the girls choose which colors they thought matched which zones.

We glued them together to make a single sheet of paper.

I labeled the zones.

Then, we pulled out stickers that we have and began researching which sea creatures went where.

Charlotte was the expert researching.

Adelyn was the expert sticker-putter-onner ;)

We also put a bunch of our sea creatures into the right zone on our paper.

Then, we moved on to make a 3-d models.

The girls were SO into this!

We chose a few of our sea creates and measured out string 

to see where they would have to hang in our pretzel container.  

We used thread and mailing tape on the lid.

We even placed on few on the bottom that were truly in the "Trench".

Then we filled it with water.

The girls are goggly-eyed over our "aquarium".

Adelyn's big take-aways that she keeps telling us is that it gets darker and colder the lower you go.

That's a pretty good take away, I think!

Miss Adelyn is really getting into school more and more :)  yay!

Charlotte's really good at our routines!

Word sorts aren't Adelyn's favorite, but Panda loves it :)

We've added funnels and the crabshells you get with stuffed crab.

Sea Stars

Leaving from swim lessons, we decided to do "car school" today!

As we drove to the Butterfly Pavilion (which has sea stars),

the girls worked on seastar coloring pages, writing, reading, etc.

Charlotte lasted the whole time.

Adelyn lasted - about 20 minutes :)

We got to see this giant hermit crab there!  

His shell had baby crabs, barnacles, etc living on it JUST LIKE THE STORY 

so that was pretty awesome!

…but the coolest thing?  We came back to visit him 2 hours later 

and he had dropped that shell and was wearing this one that was obviously 

newer and had less life on it.

I didn't realize this but we researched it and found out that some hermit crabs change shells all the time.

Weird, huh?

Here's Adelyn petting the sea stars.

The 2 varieties are so different!  It was fun to feel the difference :)

We had other fun papers, etc.

The most fun was the field trip, though.

Petting sea stars was definitely nicer than just learning about them in a book!

Sea Turtles

We had a ton of fun learning about Sea Turtles!

Our day started with a yummy sea turtle breakfast!

Adelyn and I made a sea turtle out of pattern blocks together.

Charlotte made her own design later :)

We've been doing our usual word study work!

Our sensory table continues to be engaging for both girls!

We watched some video of baby sea turtles hatching.  

They looked almost like spiders.

WILD!

We made a sea turtle puppet with paper bags!

Adelyn decided she needed to do her sister's writing page.

Go for it, girl!

Charlotte read a Henry and Mudge book to us.

Adelyn stops everything she's doing when Charlotte reads.

She's enthralled and I love it :)

Charlotte's chosen sentence & picture

Adelyn's picture and tracing!

We also labeled parts of a sea turtle

We learned about the 7 different species of Sea Turtles.

They all have totally different diets.  

Weird, huh?

Some are herbivores, while others carnivores and even a few omnivores.

After our morning of fun, we watched "A Turtle's Tale"

It was a cute movie and reiterated a few facts we had learned 

about Green Sea Turtles and Leatherback Sea Turtles.

Seahorses

While I was finishing pulling things together for this morning's lesson, Charlotte used a

Draw-Write-Now lesson to draw a hermit crab from Monday's lesson :)

Today was another fun day!

We started with "Mister Seahorse" by Eric Carle.

Then, we explored what seahorses looked like and felt like (left)

AND then pretended to be seahorses :)

We used straws to suck up our food and wrapped our tails around the water table to hold on!

Mister Seahorse is about a seahorse daddy.

Seahorse daddies take care of their eggs in a pouch on their bodies until they hatch.

We brainstormed how our Daddy shows love to us <3

Then, I had Adelyn do a little repeated writing work while 

I did 1-on-1 reading instruction with Charlotte.

This was our book for today.

She was adorable.  

She told me "Mommy, this is a LONG book!"

It's a book we check out of the library regularly so it was 

a really fun story for her to realize she could read alone :)

Charlotte works really well independently while Adelyn does her reading.

Adelyn…..well, we're working on it ;)

Adelyn did a little muffin-tin math while we finished up!

Charlotte did a little word study, writing & cutting for our craft while Adelyn

got her 1-on-1 reading time!

A little snippet from today :)

We finished with a great seahorse craft with tissue paper, modge podge and googly eyes :)

How could you go wrong?

While we crafted, we talked about how God (the BEST Dad)

shows his love for us.  The girls had a great list!

Charlotte read 1 John 3:1 in her Bible after our craft.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight