Sea World and Ocean animals

The ocean...one of my favorite places, so I'm sure the love of it will be passed on to B. If I had a chance to live any where, I'd find a place on the shore. There is just something about the ocean, the waves, the smell of the sea, sand between your toes and all of the thousands of animals and plants that live near and in the ocean. While it's all very relaxing, there is so much to learn about the ocean. We are spending two weeks on oceans, because there is SO much to learn; plus we've been a little busy, so we need some extra time.

Sorting animals that live in the ocean and on land.

Playing with lots of ocean animals.

Cute little book where B colored the animals.

One of our learning tray activities. Yes, he circled by himself.

We made sea stars! First he cut out a pre-traced star.

Then spread a little glue.

Next B poured some sand (from our sand box) on the glue.

Then he shook his art tray around to get the sand all over the star.

B's sea star, isn't it cute.

Our basket of discovery animals.

B loves making the shark swish his tail back and forth; not up and down like dolphins or whales.

*Funny note: our cat loves the shark too,

she is often sneaking over to the basket and dragging the shark out to wrestle with it.

Mid week we also got to experience ocean animals up close at Sea World's Home Schooling Day. Can I just say how much I LOVE being a Home Schooler's Mom!!! The world really is our classroom.

We went with our friends, Mrs. M and her little girl E & Mrs. C and little man S. This was the best picture I got of all three of them...they were excited to see the fish.

Petting the dolphins.

B trying to touch a dolphin.

He never quiet made it, once he saw the teeth inside one he decided it might bite him.

 After many years of visiting Sea World, I finally got to pet one. They are like a cold, wet inner tube.

Watching the stingrays and fish in the coral reef.

Penguins, we got to watch feeding time. It was a blur of black & white with bubbles.

Sea Lion show, not the normal one you'd see on a visit. This was all educational, we learned the differences between seals and sea lions. We even learned how they train the animals and got to see a few that are just learning the signals.

It's a 'sea' of home schoolers. ;)

 I know it was a lame pun, but look at how many there are!

Dolphin and Beluga show: also not the traditional show.

 Beluga's are called sea canaries because they are so vocal, although they don't have vocal cords!

They can also mimic sounds.

Pacific White Sided Dolphins can swim up to 25mph and are known for their acrobatics in the wild. Did you know that dolphins have a sweet tooth...they like to eat whipped cream and grapes!

Haley the dolphin, spraying the crowd.

Sea World also has a lot of bird species. This is a macaw, who can live to be over 80 years old.

Macaws in flight.

We had a lot of fun on this trip and are looking forward to next years visit to Sea World. For now though, we'll be spending another week learning about ocean animals. Look for that post soon.

Fire, Fire!

If you don't live in Texas you may not have heard about the severe drought we've had this summer or the 63 wildfires that have torched through Central Texas since this past Sunday. Several were large & took days to be contained. Thousands have lost their homes. This past week I had planned to focus our learning on another unit, however with a very teachable moment happening in our community I've changed our lessons. So instead this week we learned all about firefighters, fires and staying safe.

Here is one of our posters for this week. We learned about who fire fighters are & all about their fire engines. We revisited 'stop,drop & roll' and learned about evacuation plans. B dressed like a fire fighter & drove his fire engine tent. He refused pictures, but was a super cute fireman! We didn't get to visit a real fire station because of all the hard work the fire fighters were doing to keep us all safe this past week. We did recently get to see inside a fire engine at a open house for a justice center. Here are a few of those photos...

Trying on fire fighter clothes.

With fire fighters Lt. Tim Wallace & Lt. Ron Corrigan. These guys were awesome, they were so hands on & inviting. Giving him a one on one tour of the engine and equipment. B even got to turn on the lights for the truck...what little kid or parent :) wouldn't love that! We will definitely be going to visit this fire station next time. Every time B hears a siren at his Grandparents house, he always says, 'I bet that's Lt. Tim'. Do you think he made an impression on B or what?

Talking in the headset.

Helping Lt. Ron with the fire hose.

Pattern Sequencing...B surprised me and knew exactly what to do with these!

Shadow Matching, this is a great negative/positive spacial activity.

Our language board

Fire truck puzzle - All these little pieces were in one of B's learning trays, stacked in random order. As he starts to pull the first few pieces out, he says 'how do we put this fire truck puzzle together.' He often narrates his activities. This is not the shocker, I was more impressed with the fact that he had never seen this image before and after only viewing a couple of pieces he was able to conclude that it was suppose to be a fire truck. So he's either using context clues based on the weeks lesson or just has crazy visual recognition.

Fire truck puzzle #2 - Have I mentioned that he LOVES puzzles right now, especially the floor ones. He can put this puzzle together without help in less than five minutes.

*Note B is also wearing his Rescue shirt with the fire engine on it...he was all about fire engines this day.

B got this little fire engine for his last birthday. He mostly likes to turn it on & let it run around the house, crashing into things. *Ah-ha moment* We used our counting blocks to build 'buildings' that were on fire. Then when the fire engine knocked them over, he had put the fires out. Mostly it was just silly fun, but we got some counting in.

Help is on the way...

CRASH! - Fire is out

More fires being put out by the fire engine.

We also checked out library books about fire fighters & engines. Surprisingly, we didn't have any of these kinds of books. We had truck books, that had a few pictures of fire engines but not enough to read about. Here are a few titles if you're looking for some.

Here is the Firefighter

My Mom is a Firefighter

Fire Engines

This is Daniel Cook at the Fire Station

Firefighters to the rescue

What can you do with ice cubes?

There are so many things you can do with ice cubes, besides cool your drinks. I'm sure more than I have listed here, but here's how we spent our afternoon. We added food color to ours to emphasis color mixing & because it's more fun than a regular ice cube!

*food color may stain clothing or fabrics.

Our trays of colored ice cubes...don't the look fun!

Mixing colors.

Half way, we discussed how each ice cube was an original color

and now it's blending with another to make a new color.

Watching the ice cubes melt into new colors.

Experimenting which will melt faster, ice with water or ice with salt. B hypothesised, 'water'.

Half way through.

I didn't get a final picture before B got his hands on the bowls,

 but water melted the ice cubes faster than salt. In case you were wondering. ;)

Did you know you can paint with ice cubes?

Well kind of, the colors show up well once they first go on. After they dry it's a very faint marbled look.

I have another thought on how to make this work, so look for that post soon.

Some of the colors as they melted...I wish they would have stayed this vibrant. During this, we talked about how the ice started as a solid & then melted into a liquid.

Once most of the ice cubes were melted, B decided to start mixing all the colors to see what happened. He was very focused & precise, making sure all the colors were mixed into one bowl. Moving the remaining ice cubes into a separate bowl. Once he discovered the icky brown color, then it was time to pour the water out. Yes, he is sitting on a table; the dog really wanted the water and ice cubes, this was his solution to keeping the dog away.

Another experiment we tried was seeing which would melt faster, an ice cube in the sun or in the shade. I don't have any photos of this, because it didn't take long for the one in the sun to melt.

Do you have any other ideas on what do with an ordinary ice cube?