Is A Starfish A Fish?

Is a starfish a fish? Have you ever had your kids ask you that question? Did you know the answer? I'm pretty pleased that I knew the answer to that question at least, but I learned today there was a lot about starfish that I didn't know.  Starfish or Sea Stars are not a fish. They don't have gills and they don't even have a brain, but they are a living animal.I started off looking up information on starfish and became so engrossed in the subject myself I just knew the girls would enjoy this part of our Ocean Unit. One thing we learned that we didn't know was that not all starfish have five arms. Depending on the variety they can have up to forty arms!

We discovered starfish can be as small as half an inch in diameter to as large as up to 2 feet across. They can weigh as much as 11 lbs. There are over 2000 varieties of starfish! Next the girls wanted to know where they lived. McKenna was sure they only lived in warm waters. She was surprised to learn that they live not only in intertidal pools and tropical waters, but even the cold arctic waters.

We learned they eat small fish, clams, mussels, snails, and coral. It was surprising that they can eat a meal consisting of the sizes of some of these other creatures. We learned the way they do this is by shoving their stomach out of their own mouth and digesting the food. They then pull their stomach back in their mouth and finish digesting their meal. Starfish have two stomachs and their mouth is on their underside in the middle of their body. I demonstrated this for the girls by using a small plastic bag and grabbing a seashell and pulling it back inside the bag. McLarin said if she ever pushed her stomach out of her own mouth to eat that would be disgusting! She would be sick as a dog. HeeHee!

We also learned that starfish have eyes. Not eyes that see visually, but eyes that can sense light and dark. They are located on the ends of their arms and are called eyespots.

They move from place to place using their tiny tube feet. As I mentioned earlier we learned starfish have no brains. They also have no blood! They are able to use a vascular system that uses water that they pump into their tube feet to inflate them.  Starfish can lose an arm and are able to grow it back. Or regenerate it. We learned what the term regenerate means today. Starfish can save themselves by losing an arm to get away from a predator and growing it back. They are able to lose up to three arms without dying. They also live up to thirty-five years if they don't have an accident, get eaten or get sick. We learned so much today about starfish. We have decided to learn more about them tomorrow.

                                  We watched this video about starfish regenerating a lost arm.

                            We also watched this next video about the dissection of a starfish.

   Our last video of the day was one showing a strange variety of starfish called the Crown Of Thorns.

Some of the other resources we used was the Sea Star unit study at .Homeschoolshare. We also found a a site that explained the anatomy of a starfish with diagrams.  We used  wikimedia and About.com to look up information on starfish. Probably the most amazing webpage we visited for information was the National Geographic page. It had lots of beautiful pictures of many different varieties of starfish.  I also found this picture of  the tiny tube feet of a starfish.

Aren't those tiny and delicate looking?

I decided to continue with the starfish theme with math for McLarin. I found the idea for a starfish counting game for math here. McLarin was tickled pink to play this with me and her daddy. I like that it was a fun way for her to learn number recognition. I found a starfish craft at on this blog and plan to do it with the girls tomorrow. Of course we needed some coloring pages and I found a host of them here to download for free. Another craft your kiddos might enjoy I found here.



Some books about starfish you might enjoy using.

The book below has lots of information on starfish and would be fairly easy for a beginning reader.

If you decide to study starfish I hope you have as much fun as we did. Starfish are amazing creatures and  are a marvel of God's handywork.

Ocean Unit Week 2

First off let me just say today was one of those wonderful, awesome, terrific, super homeschool days! We started week two of our Ocean unit today. The girls and I went to my daughter-in-law's house and as soon as we drove up her three girls, Breanna, Gracie and Raylee met us in the front yard. Seems everyone was eager to get started on school. We had planned to make a paper mache dolphin and I even ran to our local dollar store for some balloons, and two other items. My granddaughter Breanna went with me and as we walked up to the front of the store we spied some clearance boxes full of summer items.

I ended up buying some pretty cool summer type toys besides what we went to the store for.  After we arrived back at my

daughter-in-law's I saw she had been busy with the girls drawing and cutting out sea creature and other ocean related things from cardboard. Gotta love cardboard! You can make so many things from it. Our plans soon changed direction once we got started on this wonderful ocean craft.

We helped the girls cut so many sea creatures out our hands were cramping by the time we finished! All the fishes and other creatures they drew turned out so CUTE! We just adored them!

McKenna had to show off some of her fish.

The girls decorated some coral for the base of their art project since we were learning about the Coral Reef today.

They applied some glitter glue after they were finished painting the coral as a way of trying to make it look realistic. It turned out so adorable. They also painted their fish, whales, dolphins and other things they had cut out.

While we wanted on the glue and glitter to dry we talked about the coral reef and seahorses. The girls learned that many sea animals live in the coral reef and it is teaming with life. They also learned how the animals living there use camouflage. Next we discussed seahorses. The girls were surprised to learn that the father seahorse is the one who gives birth to the baby seahorses! Then for some reason McLarin burst out singing the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song. At the end of it she sang H-I-J-K-N-uh-N-uh-G. That was our laugh of the day! After our hilarity we all settled down amongst fits of giggles to watch a video about the Coral Reef and seahorses.

The girls learned  that the male and female seahorses can be told aprat by the boney ridge on their heads. It was also revealed that seahorses give birth to anywhere from 5 to 1500 babies at one time depending on the specie of seahorse! After the video the girls colored a picture of a seahorse and named their seahorses. Names ranged anywhere from Sparkey to Crystal to Diamond. After this is was back to finishing the coral reef craft.

Gotta hold your tongue just right to get this done!

Busy making coral reef art.

Glitter glue worked great to accent our ocean scenes.

We just love how these turned out!

Today was a  wonderful,awesome, terrific, super day of learning fun. The girls were eager to learn and even more eager to answer questions. Relaxed, stress free homeschooling at it's best! We had a wonderful day. Hope your day of learning adventures was just as wonderful.