The next thing we studied were Coral Reefs, talking about how they are like forests and why all the different animals choose to live there. All the tables in the room made their own mural, and where each student was given a different creature from the reef. They colored and cut them out, and I called over all the kids doing one animal at a time and taught them a few facts about the one they had. They then went back to their tables and taught the other kids what they had just learned! Here is our mural:
After learning about Sharks and Whales, we then completed a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the two. It was great to see how much they learned about both! For Narwhals, we watched this short video off of National Geographic- Wild Detectives: Narwhals and completed a Fact Sheet about them. We learned that Narwhals are about 6 kindergarteners long (7 meters), by laying down head to toe in a line. They really loved the annoying Narwhal Son, that went viral on the internet last year. I found a clean version, and then had it stuck in my head for the next three days!
Lastly we learned about Sea Turtles. We read a book about how baby turtles are born, and wrote in our journals about how they bury their eggs in holes in the sand and hatch at night to avoid getting eaten! We then made these Wax Resistance Water Colour Turtles that just turned out amazing! I drew the outline of the shell for them, and they added the details including drawing different line patterns in each section of the shell. When we painted them, half the students did the shell while the others did the sea and then switched paints. This helped to keep the different colored sections from bleeding into each other, and gave me time to sprinkle sea salt on the ocean part to give it the look of bubbles. I am so proud of how great these look up in the hall!