Magic and Mayhem

This month’s theme at Laugh Learn Love is 5 Senses and I decided to try to put together some fun stuff to do with the kids around it today.  I decided to tie the activities together around the ocean and came up with some fun activities.

Taste:  I found this page about the different ways that whales eat and printed out this bit to go over with the kids.  It had a cute activity idea that I changed in order to make it into a more authentic experience — and to work in the taste element. 

I cut and pasted this bit on a blank page and printed it out for the girls to read and we discussed it.

Toothed whales and dolphins use their teeth to catch their prey. Their teeth aren’t used for chewing —these whales swallow their food whole. Examples of toothed whales include killer whales, beluga whales, and all dolphins and porpoises.

Baleen whales don’t have teeth, instead they have baleen plates along the edges of their upper jaws. The outer edges of the baleen is frayed, and forms a stringy mat which catches food from the water when the whales swim with their mouths open. Examples of baleen whales include right whales, gray whales, and rorqual whales.

Then I had the kids mix up some real seawater with sea salt and water and we added some diced parsley from the garden.  They “ate” like baleen whales and strained the parsley through their teeth, spitting into the sink.  Jack wasn’t so sure he was up for it but the girls loved the idea!

For toothed whales, I put a cherry tomato on a paper plate and had them pick it up with their teeth.  I did tell them to chew it up and not swallow it whole, whether that was authentic or not.  Choking would put such a damper in the fun!

Sight:  Since each child had a clean paper plate from the eating activity, we used that in the next activity.  I told the kids that they were going to be windows in a submarine and I wanted them to use crayons to draw a picture of what they’d see underwater out the window.  I told them to color in the fish and plants nice and darkly, and that we were going to paint over the finished drawing with blue watercolors.  The crayon part would resist the water, making it stand out.

The finished windows look just beautiful!

Sound:  We listened for the ocean in a shell and talked about what we were hearing.

Touch:  I got out three of our jars of sand and we felt them and compared the way they felt.  The kids said the black Hawaiian sand felt like ash (which led to a discussion about it being volcanic), the white Hawaiian sand felt like traditional sand, and the beige Maine sand felt more coarse.

Smell:  We made a list of all of the smells we remembered from our trip to Acadia National Park in Maine last summer.

It was a fun little mini-unit and a nice way to relive some favorite memories.