All Things Beautiful: Marine Biology

Showing posts with label Marine Biology. Show all posts

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

Whales

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We learned about whale migration. We are ta;king the Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures book at a very leisurely pace. The book only has a small section on this subject, but it is very informative. We also found a bit on migration in Considering God's Creation and used the pictures of whales to show the migration patterns of the Grey Whale (north pole to the shores of Mexico) and the Humpback Whale (south pole to the equator.)

Alex's completed notebook page

When we went on a trip to Washington's Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, we saw the skeleton of a Grey Whale and a life-sized model of a North Atlantic Right Whale.

Alex's notebook page on Baleen Whales

We learned about the difference between baleen whales and toothed whales...

and that dolphins are a type of whale.

Quentin's drawings of krill.

and how baleen whales eat small creatures like krill.
We made paper krill and pretended to be whales eating them.

We went outside on the sidewalk and began measuring in 10 foot increments.

With a list of whale lengths in hand, James began marking the lengths and names of the whales on the sidewalk as we measured.

This is the length of a Blue Whale...100 feet from where Quentin is standing to where James is standing.

This is the length from a side view, but I wasn't able to get James in the picture...he is standing just to the left of the picture.

All notebooking pages are from Apologia website and are free.

We learned about the different ways that whales move. Alex was having a hard time sketching the whales in the right positions, so I cut out a small picture of a whale for him to move around into the right position and then trace. He was then able to color in the whales and the water around them.

Other great whale activities to do:

orca at Tippytoe Crafts
ecolocation activity at The Forest Room
whale collage at Zing Zing Tree

Sharks!

Adventure Aquarium, Camden, NJ

We have been studying sharks...

Alex's notebook page

...and so when I saw this shark jaws craft at Dollar Store Crafts, I thought it might be fun for the boys to do. In our reading about shark's teeth, we learned that sharks have several rows of teeth, one behind the other.

"When a front row tooth breaks, a new one from the row behind it move up to take its place."

Exploring Creation with Zoology 2, Fulbright

With that in mind, we made our shark jaw models with three layers of teeth.

To make shark jaws, use three paper plates. Chinet style plates tend to work well because they are smooth and sturdy. Fold your paper plate in half "backwards" (with the bottom of the plate facing you, and the folded edges coming toward you). Using scissors trim away the outer edges of the plate in a sweeping arched "M" design on the top half and bottom half, which should leave it looking like the hinges on the jaw, and the "m" shaped bottom and top of the mouth. The boys had to carefully look at pictures of shark mouths to get the idea of the shape, which is why I sometimes like to do science crafts. It helps them to focus on the particular aspect you are examining.

Cut out a large oval from the middle, and then work from that center to cut out free-form teeth that follow the inside arc of the paper plate on the top and bottom. This is where the boys actually did better than I because mine tended to come out too uniform. Shark teeth are often quite irregular and jagged and not always parallel.

Make three of these shark jaws. Bend the teeth of the inner most plate (plate closest to you if you were holding the jaws so that they faced other people) slightly inward. Keep the middle plates' teeth fairly straight. Bend the outermost plate's teeth slightly outward.

Now you have three sets of teeth in a shark's jaw! You can glue the rims together to keep them in place.

You can paint your jaws/teeth, if you wish.

Now, on to learning about how to avoid shark bites!

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More Great Ideas:

Shark Model Craft at Se7en

Learning about Fish

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James' sketch

We have been studying fish...

and notebooking about them.

We have learned that fish come in different shapes.

Quentin didn't feel like writing the day we did the parts of a fish, so I copied one, cut out the names and mixed them up. He then glued them to the appropriate places.

We have labeled the parts of the outside of the fish.

James' notebook page

In lieu of dissection, we labeled the parts of the skeleton on paper from Biology Coloring Book.

Using what we knew about fish anatomy, we made clay fish.

We went on field trips to learn more about fish.

We went to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden NJ.

We learned about fish first hand through nature study. We observed pond Koi, and how the fish moved and how they used their different fins. We also talked about their scales and about how the mouth is always moving, making swallowing motions. We talked about how the fish takes in water like we do air and as the water runs over their gills, the oxygen is removed just as the oxygen is removed from air in our lungs.

We experimented with buoyancy using different amounts water in a bottle and putting it in a large bowl of water. We talked about how fish have a swim bladder that they use to take in varying amounts of air to change how high or low they float in the water.

Alex's notebook page

We learned about fish migration and how the Salmon move from salt-water to fresh and back again.

Adventure Aquarium, Camden NJ

sources:

Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures, Jeannie Fulbright
Exploring Creation with Marine Biology, Jay Wile
Biology Coloring Book

other ideas:

ribbon fish at Love My Tapes
how to draw a seahorse at Adron's Art Lesson Plans
bead and button seahorse at The Art Annex
how to draw/paint a Koi Fish at smART Class and Art Projects for Kids
fish in the ocean for notebook at Toys from Trash

Density, Buoyancy and Fish

Density is the amount of matter in a given space. Not only do liquids usually have more density than gases, (and solids have more density than liquids) but different kinds of liquids have different densities.

We have had fun with density towers before ( different densities of sugar water ), but this time we used different substances to make the tower.

I gathered together several liquids...maple syrup, rubbing alcohol, dishwashing liquid (purple colored), water dyed blue and vegetable oil.

I had them taking turns picking a liquid to put in the tower. They were to try to pick them in order from the most dense to the least dense. We carefully poured them down the inside side a tall glass

I was a bit surprised and happy that they chose the correct order! It is a little hard to see all the layers, but they are there!

You can also add small pieces of objects that will settle on the different layers. Try foil pressed into a small ball, a bit of rubber, a piece of wood, a small piece of plastic lead such as a fishing sinker and a raisin.

Buoyancy is how capable an object is of floating. We played with an empty plastic bottle and a large bowl of water. We filled the bottle with water and it sank to the bottom.