First Grade, Science, Set Two

Here is the list of resources we used for learning about Oceans and Seas:

• See the Ocean by Estelle Condra -- a picture book about a family that spends their summers at the beach
• Big Blue Ocean by Bill Nye -- we are using this book for an experiment each week
• Make a tsunami in your bathtub pg 41

Just a bit of water in the bathtub, a lid on a string (arrow points to it) and some bottle caps. Drag the lid from the deepest water up the the "shore". Your tsunami will wash the "houses" out to sea.

• How much of the earth's surface is covered with water pg 7

The book tells you how many inches of 1-inch wide tape to put on the ball to simulate the amount of water. Then I let K. color the tape blue.

• See gases in water pg 11
• Make your own thermohaline current pg 31
• See how the sun affects the ocean pg 39
• Kingfisher Young Knowledge Oceans and Seas by Nicola Davies -- at first this book was not interesting to K. because I was trying to read all the information (because it is interesting to me). So then I backed off and just read the largest print and we looked at the pictures. This book has a page that shows a food chain, kelp forests, and coral reefs.
• The Usborne Internet-linked First Encyclopedia of Seas & Oceans by Ben Denne -- so far we have used this book for learning about:
• Food chains. Usborne directed us to the American Museum of Natural History website where there is a game to play, discovering what eats what. There are a bunch of other things that look like fun, too.
• Giant Kelp by Nan Criqui -- I discovered this website while looking for a map that would show where kelp forests are. (We marked them on a map.) We skimmed most of the information, but did the experiment to see what is in the kelp's bladders to make the kelp stand up instead of lying on the ocean floor.

Three containers, one with air, one with water, one with sand. Put them in water and see which floats best.

• The Great Undersea Search by Kate Needham -- find the hidden things, about 100 on every double page
• The Fishy Field Trip by Martin Schwabacher (a "The Magic School Bus Chapter Book") -- we have been reading this book all week. It is very interesting and we are learning all sorts of interesting things about coral reefs and all the animals that live there. We added quite a bit of information to her notebook while reading this.
• This week we read The Great Shark Escape by Jennifer Johnston (another "Magic School Bus Chapter Book") -- another good read, but if you only have time for one Magic School Bus book, Fishy Field Trip would be my choice.
• See Through the Sea by Millicent Selsam
• Parrotfish and Sunken Ships by Jim Arnosky -- explores a tropical reef
• The Great Undersea Search by Kate Needham -- this is a picture search book by Usborne
• Reefs by Sally M. Walker

We didn't make a mural, but K. drew this picture on the chalkboard in her room.

If you can, take a trip to an aquarium. This past summer we had been to Cabrillo Marine Aquarium over the summer, but got there too late to do the touch tank, so had promised K. we would go again. I took her this week. Because we had been learning about "all this stuff", it was much more interesting to her and we would stand and talk about what we were seeing. If there are no aquariums near you, borrow videos from the library about the ocean.