Home School Life Journal From Preschool to High School

Home School Life Journal ........... Ceramics by Katie Bergenholtz
"Let us strive to make each moment beautiful."
Saint Francis DeSales

Showing posts with label Exploring Creation with Zoology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exploring Creation with Zoology. Show all posts

Phylum Arthropoda

The organisms of Phylum Arthropoda (arthro means jointed, poda, leg or foot) all have:
  • an exoskeleton; they shed/molt as the body grows 
  • body segments; head, thorax, abdomen, OR cephalothroax, abdomen 
  • jointed appendages; legs and chelipeds or claws
  • a ventral (on the belly side) nervous system 
  • an open circulatory system; heir blood is pumped upwards within short vessels, then allowed to just wash down over all the their innards instead of being enclosed in veins. 

The Phylum Arthropoda includes:

Class Crustacea or Crustaceans


Crustacean Anatomyfrom Alex's notebook -lift the flap to see internal structure
Subphylum:Crustacea
Class:Malacostraca
Order:Decapoda
Lobsters and Crayfish
The only differences between lobster and crayfish are that crayfish are smaller and live in fresh water as opposed to lobster who live only in salt water.

Isopods

Crabs

Hermit Crabs

Alex's (18 years old, special needs) notebook
A hermit crab doesn't make the shell in which it lives. The shell is made by a snail that has died.
Subphylum:Crustacea
Class:Malacostraca
Order:Decapoda


Shrimp and Triops/Sea Monkeys
Trilobite

Barnacles

Alex's (age 18) Barnacle Pop-Up Page in his notebook.
Subphylum:Crustacea
Class:Maxillopoda
Subclass:Thecostraca

Class Arachnida 

from Quentin's notebook

Subphylum:Chelicerata
Class:Arachnida
Order:Araneae

Class:Arachnida
Subclass:Dromopoda
Order:Opiliones


Classes Chilopoda (centipedes) and Diplopoda (millipedes) 



Alex's page from Nature Portfolio 


from Quentin's notebook
Class:Insecta
Order:Hymenoptera
Suborder:Apocrita
Superfamily:Vespoidea
Family:Formicidae
sources:
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Phylum Cnidaria, Part 1: Hydra and Jellyfish

We have been having fun learning about Cnidarians.
The Phylum Cnidaria (also called Coelenterate) can be further broken down into Subphylums and Classes.
The Subphylum Anthozoa includes corals and sea anemones and Subphylum Medusozoa includes jellyfish. The Jellyfish can be broken down into three major classes: Class Scyphozoa or true jellyfish, Class Cubozoa or box jellies and Class Hydrozoa or hydras.

Subphylum Medusozoa

Class Hydrozoa: Hydras

Cnidarian comes from the Greek word "knide," which means nettle, which is something which delivers a sting. They sting because they have nematocysts which are like little capsules of stinging liquid with a sharp needle-like point which pieces the skin, letting out a thin hollow thread to deliver the liquid under the skin.
The hydra has lots of tentacles that contain nematocysts. These subdue their prey so that the tentacles can get the prey to it's mouth.



Class Scyphozoa: True Jellyfish

Quentin's, age 8
 Jellyfish Pictures
We made jellyfish pictures by using lots of watered paint and then holding the page to let the paint drip to make the tentacles.
Alex's, age 17
 We lightly painted a notebook page with blue watercolor and then cut out our jellyfish and glued them to the page.

This made a very attractive notebook page.
You can use one of them to note the parts of the jellyfish.
Jellyfish in a Bottle
Ours did not turn out as well as the ones at Bhoom Play! partially because I could not find a thin clear plastic grocery bag. I used a large Ziploc bag and the plastic was to thick. We put ours in a 2-liter instead of a 1-liter bottle.

Alex's, age 17
Jellyfish Ocean Art
Using the painting we made when we were studying tints, we created some jellyfish deep blue sea art.
We went over the five ways to create depth...
1)overlapping
2)placement on the page
3)size
4)amount of detail
5)boldness or paleness of color
Then they drew jellyfish on their paper in white oil pastel using as many techniques for creating depth as they could.
Quentin's, age 8

Jellyfish Lunch
For fun we made a jellyfish lunch.
Cut off the ends of hot dogs and stick raw spaghetti noodles in the flat side.
Boil them for the time specified on the spaghetti package.
Serve with spaghetti sauce or ketchup.

Class Cubozoa or box jellies 

Box jellyfish are distinguished from other jellyfish by their cube-shaped medusae. Stings from several species in the class are extremely painful and sometimes fatal to humans but they are generally restricted to the tropical and subtropical oceans such as the Indo-Pacific.

sources:


Other Ideas for Hands-On Learning about Jellyfish:

related posts:



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Phylum Mollusca


The most common classes within the Phylum Mollusca are Cephalopods, Gastropods, Pelecypods and Bivalvia
To begin our study of mollusks, I brought out all of my shells, and we began sorting them. There was some discussion while we were doing this, as to what constituted a new category. 
We decided to make our categories as broad as we could, thinking that we could make more specific identification as we studied each category.
After we had made our divisions, we looked through field guides to identify them, and wrote their names on the outside of the bags.

Pelecypods: Clams, Scallops and Oysters

Clams

We began our study with clams. We had two basic kinds of clam shells. The Amethyst Gem Clam/ Dosinias and the Lucina. We read about clams in general and these type shells in  particular from books...
Alex's (age 18, Special Education) notebook page
It can use its foot to dig down into the sand or mud to hide.
Each clam ring represents a new layer of shell that was added each year as the clam grew.
and then the boys sketched and wrote about them in their notebooks.
We learned that clam shells grow a new ring each year, just as trees do, and so James counted several shells to see how old they were.

 Scallops
Alex's (age 18, Special Education) notebook page
It swims by opening its shell and then clapping it closed quickly. this pushes the scallop through the water in short bursts of speed.
 James noticed that the field guides use measurements as a way to help make identification for the various types of shells. We measured our shells and added this to our pages.
If our sketches were larger than life, we just measured the actual shell and put it's actual measurement next to the sketch.
James' (age 11) notebook page
Giant Atlantic Cockle
They can jump several inches using their powerful foot.
James liked to try to identify them exactly, and not just the group his chosen shell was in.

 Oysters and Pearls
Alex's (age 18, special needs) notebook
Oysters spend their entire adult lives in one spot.
A pearl forms when something like a grain of sand gets inside the shell. The mantle secretes layers of shell material around it, making a pearl.
They are getting more used to making their own notebook pages, knowing what things I expect them to include (picture and so many bits of information). Alex sketched the oyster in pencil, traced the outline with marker and then shaded the rest with colored pencils.

Class Bivalvia: Jingle Shells

Quentin's (age 8) notebook page
Jingle shells anchors (sic) itself to rocks.
 I don't worry too much about spelling or, in this case, tense mistakes. We will be working on these topics this coming year and I believe that this will be reflected in their work.

Class Gastropoda: Wentletraps and Whelks

Alex's (18 years old, special needs) notebook
Wentletrap
Named after the Dutch word for "spiral staircase." They eat anemones or coral.
Whelks
The most common predator of bivalves.
We had noticed that many of our bivalve shells had little holes in them. The boys thought they would be useful in making a necklace with them. We learned that they had been made from predators such as the Whelk which drill the hole into the clam shell in order to suck out the clam.

Hermit Crab Shells

Alex's (18 years old, special needs) notebook
A hermit crab doesn't make the shell in which it lives. The shell is made by a snail that has died.
Alex wanted to draw a hermit crab, even though it is not a mollusk, but a crustacean, so we were able to discuss this and he wrote about the fact that the hermit crab uses an abandoned sea snail shell for its shell.




inspiration:
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Class Cephalopods: Squid and Octopus (Phylum Mollusks)

Alex's notebook page
We have been learning about squids and octopuses. For my older students, I had them learn about the squid's anatomy by sketching and notebooking. The younger students made models instead out of toilet paper tubes.
 Squid Model
For this project, you will need toilet paper tubes (or one paper towel tube cut in half). Paint them a squid color.
Take the first one and kind of pinch together the top of it and snip off both sides at an angle so that the cut off pieces look like triangles.
 Take one of the snipped off triangles and attach it to the top to form a peak.
This forms the fin at the end of the mantle. Save the other triangle.
 Take the second tube and cut slits in it to make the eight arms. Curl them on a pencil.
 Going back to the first tube, take a portion of a straw and attach it to the inside of the open end of the tube. This forms the hyponome, which enables the squid to send out a jet stream of water causing jet propulsion.
Now make a slit in the part of the other tube that is opposite to the arms. This will enable you to squeeze this tube into the same end of the first tube that has the hyponome straw in it.
Take two pieces of yarn, string or raffia (which is what we used) and attach the two triangles left over from the trim of the top of the tube earlier.
Attach the other two ends to the inside of the open end of the tube.
Add a large googly-eye to each side and you have a completed squid model.
You can now point out all of the parts of the squid

Squid Propulsion
To show how a squid propels itself through water, we used a balloon and a cap off a glue bottle.
Fill your balloon with either water or air and then slip the glue cap in the balloon's neck.
Then we placed the balloon in a tub of water on the deck and watched it go, simulating how the squid propels itself by taking in water and expelling it out it's hyponome.
Alex's notebooking page
"Octa" means eight. Octopuses have eight arms, with its large eyes and giant brain.
  • are nocturnal
  • can quickly change colors
  • doesn't have a blind spot
For their notebooking pages, often it is easier for them to make a list of facts rather than write paragraphs.
The illustration shows its important features correctly. This one was made with pencil first and then colored with watercolor pencils and brushed over with water on a paint brush.



sources and more inspiration:
Exploring Creation With Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures, Jeannie Fulbright
Toilet Paper Tube Squid at Almost Unschoolers
Water Propelled Squid at Almost Unschoolers
Octopus Colors at Adventures in Mommydom
Socktopuses at Pinterest
Demonstrating Octopus Propulsion with a Turkey Baster at Adventures in Mommydom
Octopus Soup at Pinterest
Octopus Dip at Pinterest
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