From Space to the Sea

Monday was Star Wars Day! (May the 4th be with you!) The kids had a great time learning through different Star Wars related activities. For writing  the kids had to write an opinion piece about their favorite Star Wars character. 

For math the kids worked in pairs to sort math facts that were either true or false on to the light side or the dark side. 

We ended the day with a fun math and Star Wars related craft! Each student got an outline of R2D2. Then they had to fill in the droid using different pattern block shapes. 

They turned out great!

Friday was the day we had been waiting for all year... Dolphin Quest! I was such a fun (and hot) day!

This is Greg. He works for Dolphin Quest. The first thing he showed us is the sharks. They have two black tip sharks in the lagoon. 

Next we went to their classroom and learned about life cycles. 

Then the kids broke up in to three groups and did three stations. One station was about recycling. We learned what times of materials are recyclable and which ones are trash. 

The kids even got to do a relay race to see which team could sort their pile in to trash and recyclables first. 

Another station was about the life cycle of a sea turtle.

 We learned that a mother sea turtle lays about 100 eggs, and of those 100 only 5 actually make it to the ocean and survive. Baby sea turtles have many predators like mongoose and crabs. And sometimes the baby sea turtles get confused which was is the ocean... when it is night time they are drawn to the light of the moon which leads them to the oceans, but man made lights on the shore can confuse them and keep them from reaching the ocean.

The third and final station was about coral. 

We learned that corals all spawn on the same day each year.

We also learned the coral have their skeleton on the OUTSIDE. It's called an exoskeleton. 

We also learned that coral can make a twin of itself!

FINALLY we got to meet the dolphins! There are four different dolphins at Dolphin Quest. Our class broke up in to 4 groups. We each got to pet and feed a dolphin. It was so awesome!

Dolphin Quest took over 80 photos for us while we were experiencing the dolphins. I will be sending home information this next week about how you can access those photos. I have never seen so many smiling faces! The kids had such an amazing time!