Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day - Fish

We made Jell-O fish bowls- YUM!

We learned that gillls and fins are what sets fish apart from other animals... so this includes sharks and rays...

So that meant a trip to Sea World to look at sharks and touch rays...

We also saw eels and baracuda... we were able to compare the mouths of the tiger shark, the Southern Stingray and a human being...

Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day - Primeval Reptiles

I love homeschooling- we can be in bare feet and jammies if we want :-)

We have been amazed at God's creation with primeval reptiles (all of it, but these creatures are truly amazing and hard to imagine since we don't actually get to see any of them)... DS#1 drew a life size skull of the Kronosaurus, and DS#2 had to estimate how big that was in yards. Afterwards, he had to measure it with a yard stick to see how accurate he was, and I was impressed with how close he really came!

Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day - Sea Turtles

We've been learning about ocean herps, and spent a lot of time on Sea Turtles. Growing up in Florida, these have always been one of my favorite ocean animals. When I worked in Daytona, one of the gals there was on Turtle Patrol, and I loved hearing how she was working to save the sea turtles. I wish I knew her now, so she could also share with DS#1. Anyway, one of the activities in Zoology 2 was to try to crawl like a sea turtle, with just front flippers... this was a tough task, but fun for the kids.

Another activity was to measure out a Leatherback Sea Turtle to see how big they grow. They get to be roughly 9 feet long and 6 feet wide- big enough for all three kids to sit on his back!


For review, we used this game I found online awhile back. I tweaked it just a bit to fit our needs. Most of the questions and activites are in a power point game, but I printed out game cards that went along with the questions in our Zoology 2 book. If you'd like those, post a request below with your e-mail address and I'll send them to you. We still used the Danger and Research activities in her game. Miss Ebert did a GREAT job with this game, and it made for a really fun review! I'm sure we'll play this game again and again, and continue to learn each time.

She had cute little print out turtles for your game pieces, but I had some sea turtle beads from forever ago, and we used those for our playing pieces.

Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day - Mammals

We wrapped up Apologia's Exploring Creation with Zoology I and have begun Exploring Creation with Zoology 2- Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. In spite of protests from DS#2, I can tell he is secretly enjoying our science lessons this year. When the guys went camping last week, he was excited when he told me that he was the first one to spot an animal on each of the first two days! And check out the picture of him petting the dolphins. DS#1 wants to complete Apologia's Zoology 3 over the summer, so I think we might do that- on a more relaxed schedule, of course.

In any case, here are some pics of our first few chapters. We covered the oceans and marine mammals, then we went to Sea World to see them up close and personal :-)

DD made a seal visor from Sea World's Seals, Sea Lions, & Walruses k-3 Teacher's Guide. We also used the Whale guides for various activities.

DS#1 had his 12th Birthday while we were studying, and he requested a Sea Animal cake. You may recall that last year he requested a Rain forest cake while we were studying the Rain Forest. It makes my heart smile when they want to incorporate school into their birthdays :-)

Finally, we did an experiment that showed how blubber helps to keep animals warm. We put our hands in icy water- one hand with just two gloves, the other with a thick layer of shortening between the two gloves- to see which one we could hold in the cold water longer.