First Day Of School For 2013

Today was our first day of school for this year. We started with an Ocean Unit and had so much fun with it today. This year I am co-teaching on Mondays with my daughter-in-law Jennifer, so we met at their house for school today. All the girls started off by decorating their own folder with ocean related pictures.

The girls learned the names of all five ocean's by singing a song they were taught by my daughter-in-law. By the end of the school day McLarin could sing it almost perfectly by herself.

The girls were interested to learn that there are three levels of the ocean and what they are called. They caught onto the names quickly and when asked were able to give the correct answers, surface, twilight and midnight. They learned which ocean creatures swim in each level and they drew the levels with some of the various creatures  for each level. Several books were read and the girls also learned about dolphins and sharks.

We all looked at some seashells and a book on seashells I had brought in. We were all amazed at all the different kinds of seashells there are! We had no idea there were so many. After Jennifer read a story to the girls about a boy who went spear fishing and met a shark she checked their comprehension and listening skills by asking questions about the story. The plot, what it was about, how the boy caught the fish etc. She also had them describe how he caught the fish without using the word spear. Then the girls were asked what they would do if they were fishing and they came face to face with a shark. Would they be afraid?

At one point I had the girls play the game I went swimming in the ocean and I swam with a_________. They had to name a sea creature when it was their turn and then the next girl took a turn. It was surprising how many creatures they could name. In addition to that we did a craft with the girls. We had them build an ocean in a  bottle and they were amazed as they watched the waves and the foam develop on top of the water. Then they decided to shake the bottle and laughed as they turned the water cloudy and we told them they had created a hurricane.

For lunch we dined on tuna and broccoli casserole and had a surprise for dessert. My daughter-in-law had made a jello ocean! Complete with fishes and several octopus swimming about in the jello.

 We all had a chuckle as McLarin took a bite of her jelly octopus and I told her watch out for those suckers on it's legs. She is only four, but she didn't miss a beat. She looked up at me and said Oh it's got my tongue! As we finish out the rest of the week on our own I'm sure we will learn even more. We had OCEAN'S of fun today and thought it was a SWIMMING good way to start off the year.  My camera is broken, but my daughter-in-law did take lot's of pictures. I'm thankful that she is such a good photographer and her camera works or I wouldn't have these pictures to document our first day of school. Doesn't she take wonderful pictures? She also took some funny ones of the girls. 

If you'd like to see everything we did today you can take a peek at her blog. It's located here.