We included the following two books during our coral reef studies. The Coral Reefs book went along really well with the information we learned in our Properties of Ecosystems science book. The book One Night in the Coral Sea was another one we really enjoyed. It describes how the coral reproduce in detail.
Did you know:
1. Coral are actually the skeletons of soft animals called polyps and they make their own skeletons to protect themselves.
2. Coral only reproduce one time a year in late spring a few days after the full moon. My ds was so excited a couple of nights ago when he realized it's spring and it's almost time for a full moon. He is aware that Australia's seasons are opposite ours but he also knows there are coral reefs in the Caribbean.
3. The polyps release their eggs and sperm into the ocean. Then it is up to the sperm to find the right species of egg to fertilize.
We also watched the following DVD's. The kids watched the Great Barrier Reef section of the Nat Geo DVD Deep Sea Dive during our coral reef study. During our Australian animals study they watched the Australia section of the Animal Atlas Animal Passport DVD.
For fun the kids watched an old Crocodile Hunter DVD and the Disney Movie Rescuers Down Under. Both movies I requested from Netflix. I attempted to have them watch the Disney movie Finding Nemo but apparently it just wasn't meant to be. We couldn't find our copy and the copy I got from Netflix was damaged. :(
We also added a few easy to read animal science books pictured below in addition to the Big Book of Animals Australia section.
And I added the Look What Came From Australia book as well. I love those books. :)
Our science this unit was to plant seeds from a kiwi fruit. It's supposed to take about a month for them to sprout. I've been known to not have a green thumb so we'll see. I can keep just about any kind of animal alive but plants are a different story. :(
We made the Koala Treats from our Global Art book. They were made from powdered sugar and peanut butter mixed together and then rolled in cocoa powder. The eyes, ears and legs were raisins. The more Beau worked on his the more squashed his became. It was too funny. Both kids enjoyed their treats when they were completed and photographed. The treats did not photograph well but were really cute in 'real life'.
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| Roo's Koala Treat |
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| Beau's squashed Koala Treat |
An art project I added from the ZooBooks Kangaroo book was called Bark Art. It's designed to mimic aboriginal bark paintings.
You need a paper bag, a spoon or popsicle stick and a yellow, orange and dark brown crayon. Tear an 8X8 inch square out of the bag. Color one side with a thick layer of yellow crayon. Color over the yellow with an orange crayon. Use a dark brown crayon to color over the orange and cover the remaining spaces. Design an animal on a piece of scratch paper. Then carefully etch your design in the crayon layers using the handle of a spoon or a popsicle stick.
Beau etched a platypus and Roo etched an emu. Again, these look better in 'real life'. These were added to their lapbooks.
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| Beau's platypus and Roo's emu bark art |
We did one big lapbook for Australia. It included Australia facts, animals and coral reef animals. These components came from homeschoolshare.com. They were a combination of the Austrailia lapbook, marsupial lapbook and coral reef lapbook. We also included pictures of kangaroos and an emu I took while we were on our zoo field trip I blogged about last week. The stickers were from various sources.
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| Beau's lapbook pages are on top and Roo's are on the bottom of each picture above |
The picture books we enjoyed this time are pictured below. Roo got a kick out of the Who's Upside Down book. The Old Woman Who Loved to Read was cute. The Pumpkin Runner had a great message about kindness and giving to others. My favorite.
Now on to Antarctica and penguins.
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