Today at homeschool fellowship I did my best to teach the PreK-3rd graders about whales.
(I am not sure this age group is my forte........just because my own kids try to win my affection while I am trying to teach a whole group of other kids their age.....another post for sure).
We talked about characteristics that mammals have: hair, mammary glands, lungs, warm-blooded, and give birth to live young.
Then we started talking about types of marine mammals. The kids listed all kinds for me! (They are smart!)
Then we focused in on whales and grouped the whales into having teeth or having baleen.
And we created a Killer Whale with a marshmallow teeth mouth and a Blue Whale with black licorice baleen.
We talked about how the two groups feed on different things because of their mouth structures.
I also showed the kids how the baleen filters out the krill just like a spaghetti cauldron with some sprinkles (pretending they were krill).
We also tried our hand with bubble netting like the Killer Whales.....
the kids blew through the straws and tried to get their goldfish in a small area so they could get them all together to take one big gulp of fish.
Next we measured out the size of the Blue Whale in length.
We measured 100 feet and we also found out we would need to line up 24 preschoolers to Third graders to be as long as a blue whale.
We also measured out the size of a Blue Whales fluke, which is 20 feet wide.
We talked about whale migrations.
And made our own little blue oceans.
