Under the Sea!!

     We just completed a wonderful three week unit on oceans and ocean animals. My co-teacher, Sue, is an Ocean nut! She travels to Florida every winter with her mother and comes back with a every shell imaginable and know everything possible about each shell. As part of our ocean unit, every day Sue gives each of the students a new shell and teaches them several interesting facts about that shell. They get to place it in their shell bag. At the end of our unit, they are able to take these shells home.

     We also have students complete a special ocean animal project. As a culminating activity to our ocean unit, we have a ocean presentation day where we invite parents to the classroom to hear all of the ocean animal presentations the students have brought in to share. Of course there are always a few that need to be completed at school because they are not done at home. That is to be expected.
    Here are some pictures of our classroom - it has turned into an ocean!

An ocean mural

     Years ago, Sue put together this wonderfully age-appropriate research project for our kindergarten students to work on at home. I have uploaded a copy of this to Scribd. At our ocean animal presentations, the students shared their reports as well as the projects they made. They were welcome to invite their parents to help them share their presentations.

Sharing projects

Here is a link to the project I uploaded at Scribd.  Ocean Project