Ocean Currents; Marine Science Activities for Grades 5-12

What causes ocean currents? Learn how wind, temperature, salinity, and density set water into motion, and they make an in-depth investigation of the key physical science concept of density. This series of activities will cover these topics. For grades 5-12.

Ocean Currents, Part I: Surface Currents {Wind and Temperature}

Ocean Currents, Part II: Salinity Currents

Ocean Currents, Part III: Temperature Currents

Ocean Currents, Part IV: Polar vs. Tropical Water

Ocean Currents, Part V: Ice Cubes Demonstration

Ocean Currents, Part VI: Layering Liquids

Ocean Currents, Part VII: Explorers and Ocean Currents

Additional Activity: Current Events

Literature Connections: 

Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea, Steven Callahan, Grades: 7–12
Bounty Trilogy, Charles Nordoff and James Norman Hall, Grades: 7–12
By the Great Horn Spoon!, Sid Fleischman, Grades: 4–8
Call It Courage, Armstrong Sperry, Grades: 3–6
The Cay, Theodore Taylor, Grades: 6–8
Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle, Felicia Law, Grades: 4–8
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, Alfred Lansing, Grades: 7–12
Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O’Dell, Grades: 5–12
The Magic School Bus On the Ocean Floor, Joanna Cole, Grades: 1–4 (For younger grades, but still has some good information.)
Moby Dick, Herman Melville, Grades: 7–12
The Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, Grades: 7–12
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, Grades: 7–12
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Avi, Grades: 5–8
The Voyager’s Stone: The Adventures of a Message-Carrying Bottle Adrift on the Ocean Sea, Robert Kraske, Reading Level is Grades: 3–6, but the story is wonderful and illustrations very informative.
Windcatcher, Avi, Grades: 4–7
The Wreck of the Waleship Essex, a Narrative Account, Owen Chase, Grades: 7–12

Sources and Resources:

• Ocean Currents, Catherine Halversen, Kevin Beals, Craig Strang, Lawrence Hall of Science

Nature Study: Horseshoe Crab

On our recent trip to Cape Henlopen, Delaware, we picked up a Horseshoe Crab that had died and was left at the beach. The carapace was crushed. I don't know whether that was the cause of death or whether that happened after it had died. 

 It provided a wonderful opportunity to look at the Horseshoe crab in depth. A Horseshoe Crab has twelve legs; five pairs of walking legs and a set of tiny chelipes. The first four pairs of legs have claws at the tips and grinding joints where they join the body at the mouth. The grinders only work while the legs are moving, so the crab must walk to eat it's food; small mollusks, worms and crustaceans. The fifth pair of clawless legs is use to propel it along the bottom of the ocean or bay.

The long tail looks like a stinger of some sort, but it is not. It is used mainly for steering and for flipping the body over if it gets turned upside down. We had the opportunity to see this at the Cape Henlopen Nature Center when one of the Horseshoe crabs in their tank accidentally was flipped on its back.

 From our research, we found out that the horseshoe crab shell is ground up and used to make a dressing that protects victims of severe burns from infection. 

Katie, age 21

 It's blood, copper based and so it is blue, has an element that may stop the growth of some cancer cells and can detect the presence of certain poisons and disease.

My journal page

 The female horseshoe crab crawls ashore to lay her eggs in the sand and then returns to the water.

Quentin, age 9

On its dome-shaped carapace, the horseshoe crab has four eyes. Two of the eyes are compound and are positioned high on the carapace so that it can see when it buries itself into the sand. The two simple eyes are on the front of the carapace.

sources:

• Exploring Creation with Zoology : Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day, Jeannie Fulbright
• Awesome Chesapeake, David Bell 
• One Small Square: Seashore, Donald Silver
• Beautiful Swimmers, William Warner

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

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

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

Subphylum:

Crustacea

Class:

Maxillopoda

Subclass:

Thecostraca

Class Arachnida 

from Quentin's notebook

Subphylum:	Chelicerata
Class:	Arachnida
Order:	Araneae

Subphylum:

Chelicerata

Class:

Arachnida

Order:

Araneae

Class:	Arachnida
Subclass:	Dromopoda
Order:	Opiliones

Class:

Arachnida

Subclass:

Dromopoda

Order:

Opiliones

Classes Chilopoda (centipedes) and Diplopoda (millipedes) 

North American Millipede

Class Insecta

Alex's page from Nature Portfolio 

from Quentin's notebook

Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Suborder:	Apocrita
Superfamily:	Vespoidea
Family:	Formicidae

Class:

Insecta

Order:

Hymenoptera

Suborder:

Apocrita

Superfamily:

Vespoidea

Family:

Formicidae

sources:

• Barnacle Pop-Up Book at Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop
• Exploring Creation with Zoology and free notebooking pages

Phylum Porifera: Sponges

Many sea animals look like plants. Sponges are animals. Sponges clean the water. Tiny holes called ostia allow water into the sponge. The water exits through the osculum once it is filtered.

The anatomy of the sponge is very interesting. They have two layers of cells (epidermis) separated by a thin, jelly-like substance called Mesenchyme. In the Mescenchyme is a network of spicules, made of calcium carbonate or silica, (depending on the species) that provide a framework to support the sponge.

The various canals and cavities in the body of the sponge have flagella that beat constantly, pulling the water into the sponge from which the sponge extracts organic debris. Since the sponge has no organs, the amebocytes, or cells within the sponge, that performs digestion, travel freely in the mesenchyme, transporting the food it uses through out the parts of the sponge. The amebocytes also bring the waste products to the epidermis where they are released. The amebocytes also exchange gases, as a type of respiration.

books:

• Exploring Creation with Zoology: Swimming Creatures, Jeannie Fulbright
• Exploring Creation with Biology, Jay Wile and Marilyn Durnell

Phylum Cnidaria, Part 2: Corals and Sea Anemones

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. 

Adventure Aquarium, Camden, NJ

Subphylum Anthozoac

Alex's (age 18, special needs)  notebook page

The nematocysts of sea anemones are different than those of the jellyfish. They usually cannot penetrate human skin, so they do not sting us.

Adventure Aquarium, Camden, NJ

"They spend their entire likes a polyps. They are brightly colored and they are benthic." We talked about that they are animals despite the fact they look like plants.

Quentin's (age 8) notebook page
Narrations, now that they are switching to writing their own, are getting shorter. Before I would write down their oral narrations and then they would copy them over as copywork. They will get longer over time as they gain more skill.

"This is a coral skeleton. It builds walls around itself." 
We read and talked about coral reefs.

pages from One Small Square, Coral Reef, Donald Silver

books:

• Lift-the-Flap Classification Chart of Invertebrates at Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop
• One Small Square, Coral Reef, Donald Silver
• Exploring Creation with Biology, Jay Wile
• Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures, Jeannie Fulbright

additional ideas:

• Coral Reef lapbook at 2 Dynamic Moms
• sea anemone at Nilsen Nuthouse
• coral with puffed rice cereal at Family Fun

related posts:

• Phylum Cnidaria, part 1: Hydra and Jellyfish

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:

• Jellyfish Paintings at Deep Space Sparkle
• Jellyfish Pictures at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational and Usborne's 365 Things to Do with Paper and Cardboard
• Jellyfish in a Bottle at Bhoomplay's Blog
• Jellyfish Ocean Art at Framed in Swirly Gold
• Jellyfish Lunch at Over the Crescent Moon
• Lift-the-Flap Classification Chart of Invertebrates at Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop

Other Ideas for Hands-On Learning about Jellyfish:

• Jellyfish Puppets at Fiskars Crafts
• Jellyfish Tunnel Book at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational
• More Ideas at School Time Snippets

related posts:

• Cnidaria, part 2: Sea Anemones and Coral

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:

• clam cookies at Living Locurto
• seashell printable at The Crafty Classroom
• sorting shells at Tea for Monkeys
• Exploring Creation with Zoology: Swimming Creatures, Jeannie Fulbright
• Seashore Life, Herbert Zim (Golden Field Guide)
• Lift-the-Flap Classification Chart for Invertebrates at Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop