Wacky Turtle-ish Writing

Do you know today is world turtle day? Ever wonder what it would be like to be a turtle or a tortoise? Well imagination can help you here. Write a story from a turtle/tortoise’s perspective. Think about the wonders of living under a shell, or partaking a diet of jellyfish and microalgae! Learn more about turtles/tortoises from here before embarking on the journey and whip up a multimedia story with the help of this simple booklet tool. Have a look at my story below:

Wednesday Weekly Website – Layers of Life

 

Layers Of Life

Review: Layers of Life is a beautiful interactive by National Geographic. Basically this interactive is aimed towards educating about the effects of Gulf Oil Spill on the Marine Eco system. But the educational benefit of this interactive is not limited to the effects of oil spill. You can use it as a means of learning more about the marine animals and plants, their interdependence, their role in the marine Eco system and their role in the marine trade of Florida and around. You can use this interactive when teaching about marine food webs, or about the marine animals and plants in general. You can learn about which animals are found at which depth inside the ocean and what role does the depth of the ocean play in the occurrence of these animals and plants. There are four zones or layers to explore: Coast and shore, Bright surface, Twilight Zone and Dark and Teeming. As with every National Geographic resource, it is rich in art and gloriously detailed.

Suitable for ages: 5-15

Dolphins and Whales

Dolphins and whales have a very good reputation in holding a child in rapt attention. If you ever feel like your child is getting excited every time he/she sees a dolphin or whale’s name, perhaps its time to use this fascination in learning a few things. Here are some suggestions.
Read Hadrat Yunus (as) story (who was swallowed by a fish, which many say was a whale) . Lots of activities can be done based on Hadrat Yunus (AS) story.
If your child is not interested in reading non fiction (or anything) building up a wall on wallwisher can be one way to motivate him. You can suggest starting a wall and asking your child to put up all the facts he'/she likes on this wall. Alternatively you can make a real bulletin board in your house.
Use some of the facts learned in teaching Data handling and representing for younger kids. Teach sorting and classifying with a Venn diagram or make an animoto video.
Teach literary skills using the fascination with dolphins and whales. Younger kids can learn new vocabulary such the body parts of a whale/dolphin or words starting with a W for a whale, or explore all the Describing words (adjectives) for whales/dolphins.
Teach your kids the usage of computers and effective information representation by making a digital poster based on their learning about whales and dolphins, or make a one using paper etc.
If you can think of more activities please share them by posting a comment. Jazakumullah!

How-t0 Guide - Ocean Food Web

Food webs and Food chains are a very important part of Ocean Habitat study. While Food chains are pretty simple to understand, Food webs can be a bit confusing. Here is a very easy project illustrated step-by-step which gives hands on learning for Marine Food Web.

1.Start with making a list of animals you want to include. You can add the number of animals depending on the age of the child/ren involved.Its always a good idea not to have too many animals from every group to keep things simple.

2.Search for images of the animals from old magazines, or you can simple write the names of the animals on sticky notes. (Please abstain from drawing the pictures of animated objects.)

3.Take a big enough piece of card board. To include the element of fun (and mess) let the children paint it to resemble a sea.

Or you can cut and paste coloured papers instead of painting. Whatever you do don’t forget to have fun.  And don’t forget to include the sun. 4.Squeeze in some cloud study by making clouds out of cotton wool. 

5.Once the background is ready start pasting pictures of animals, or sticky notes with animal names. Discuss with your child where to put each animal. Does whales live near ocean bed? Where do they think planktons are found etc.

6.Once the animals are “settled” draw a push pin across each animal. You can cover the back of the card board with another layer of card board or foam if the ends of the pins are poking through.

7. Now you can start the real “spinning” of the web. Tie a rope around the push pin on the sun and encourage your child to think of an organism who relates to sun in a food web and how. For example sun is related to the phylo planktons and sea plants as it gives them energy to make their own food. Take one string from the sun to sea plants and another one to planktons.

8.From planktons and plants to krill and other small creatures like jelly fish, sea star etc. 

9.Carry on until all the animals have the yarn/string atleast once, some will have it over and over again like the squid etc, and a giant and complex web is formed on your board.  

10.A completed food web.

Ocean Depths

We found this picture showing the ocean’s depth and a human’s size compared to it. (Click on the picture to zoom it in) Its amazing to see how infinitely small we humans are. Allaahu Akbar.

 

My kids were amazed to see this, they were particularly shocked to see that even the blue whale looks so small when put in perspective. They made a replica of this picture, check it out on their blogs:

My 2nd Graders post
My Kindergartner’s post