Wildlife Conservation through Education

I love when things work out exactly how they are supposed to when you least expect it.  For me, that always happens when I stop trying to plan my own agenda; and just let learning happen naturally.  I was torn between animal habitats or classification while trying to plan for our next unit study, knowing that we would be taking a break for Laken's birthday and Easter; but I still wanted to have an idea of where we were going.  Where we ended up was even better: learning about wildlife conservation.

It all started with a Behind the Scenes Tour at Seaworld on Laken's birthday...

 First we got to see young green sea turtles.  Seaworld does not intend on breeding sea turtles, but sometimes accidents happen.  These guys were having some quiet time to themselves.  In other words, they were all in solitary for not getting along with their siblings!

Seaworld rescued nearly 200 green sea turtles from a canal in Brevard back in 2009 because they were going into cold shock.  The following year, they took in close to 100 more sea turtles for rehabilitation from the oil spill.  This means they had close to 300 sea turtles!  They had make-shift tanks like the ones you see here EVERYWHERE to accomodate them.  130 out of the 190 sea turtles from Brevard were released back into the ocean!  The others did not survive.

The rescue vehicle.  Sorry about the glare, & blurry picture.

The rescue boat.  No engine on the back so that they are able to load the animals onto the back of the boat.

Dolphin transport!

I believe this was a pilot whale.  She has scoliosis and needs special care, but she has been with Seaworld for several years and she is doing very well.

Seaworld behind the scenes.

Touching a leopard shark.  I think proper education about sharks is important, especially living near the ocean.  They have been given a bad reputation.  They should be understood, and respected.  

Leopard shark

The best part, by far, was meeting Fred the Magellanic penguin.  Magellanic penguins were named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who first discovered them.  They are a near threatened species.

Fred coming out of his cooler.

Meet Fred.  Fred is a four year old bachelor, and likes to think that he runs the show.  Fred is also a television star.  He was in a commercial promoting tourism in Orlando.

*Interesting fact: Similar to chickens, they do not know the sex of a penguin chick for several months.  They actually have to send off blood work to find out.  The penguins' training, however, starts very early on; and they do respond to names so those must be given before the gender is determined.  This means that Fred could have been a girl, which happens often at Seaworld, but he got lucky. 

Fred just molted his feathers so he was super soft!

A real polar bear skin!  A polar bear's fur yellows over time due to oxidation.

Viewing polar bear fur under the microscope.

The Seaworld Behind the Scenes Tour is fairly inexpensive for one adult and one child, and we already had our fun passes for the year so it was a really reasonable day at the park.  We were actually waiting for my mom, grandma, and cousin to get here at the end of the week for spring break before we went on her big birthday trip.  Laken really wanted to see Winter the dolphin at Clearwater Marine Aquarium (well, she really wanted to swim with dolphins but she is not quite old enough so going to see Winter was her second choice).  We decided to do the Behind the Scenes Tour there as well.  You can't beat the price of admission at the aquarium, and the addition of the tour is not outrageous.  At SeaWorld, we saw manatees and sea turtles side by side.  It was the first time we have walked over since they added the sea turtles, and Turtle Trek with underwater viewing is on the to-do list for next time.  The Antarctic opens next month so I am sure we will be back soon!  In the meantime, I was inspired to do an endangered animals lapbook on sea turtles and manatees for our trip to Clearwater and Tampa.

Endangered Animals lapbook: sea turtles and manatees

I get most of our lapbooks from Homeschool Share.  I love that site!  I go through all the components for a lapbook, and just pick a few that best suit our interests.  Here's what I chose from their sea turtle and manatee lapbooks for Laken and my cousin, K-1 students.  For them, I try to find components that are short-answer or, even better, cut-and-paste.

These are all cut-and-paste except for KWL.  The seven species of sea turtles go in order from smallest on the shortest piece of paper to largest on the longest piece.

These are all short-answer except for "How Does a Manatee Munch His Lunch?"

The science experiment.  We got to see how a manatee siphons rainwater from saltwater to get a drink.

Clearwater Marine Aquarium Behind the Scenes Tour

Here's my honest opinion on the aquarium and the behind the scenes tour:

It is tight quarters, and packed during the spring.  It is probably better to go in the winter.  We have to fight the spring break crowds every year for Laken's birthday.  There is little interaction with the animals unless you pay for a pricey animal encounter, and it was hard to get a good look at anything with the crowds of people around the pools and tanks.  Be prepared for lots of stair climbing, and an outdated facility.  They are raising funds for a gorgeous expanded facility.  Taking a behind the scenes tour does contribute to helping them reach their goal!  After such a unique experience at Seaworld, I did find myself a little disappointed with the Behind the Scenes Tour.  We got to touch a shark and pet a penguin at Seaworld, but again, there was no special encounters for us at the aquarium.  All that being said, I would splurge on a dolphin encounter for Laken if we ever went back.  She has to be AT LEAST seven, and truthfully, I wish we could have waited.  Did you know that the average lifespan of a dolphin is 25-30 years?  I hope we can revisit when Laken is old enough AND they have finished updating the facility, a work in progress.  I would not go again just to visit the aquarium, but I do think that they offer some unique experiences that will bring us back in the future.  Then there is Winter herself, of course.  Overall, I am  happy that we went to see her and I was satisfied with our experience, especially when I quickly realized how neat the tour really was and how it could not have worked out more perfectly.

The scenario

A green sea turtle is brought in with monofilament wrapped around its front left flipper, and then leads down the esophagus.  The flipper has a cut from the line.

Measuring, and charting the turtle.  X-rays ordered to determine if it swallowed a hook.

The monofilament was removed from the flipper, and then taped to the turtle's back.  Pulling it out without knowing if it swallowed a hook could kill the sea turtle.  The flipper was medicated.  

X-rays are in, and there is a hook!  

Surgery is scheduled immediately.

Performing the surgery.

Looking inside the turtle's esophagus during surgery.

The turtle in surgery.

Additional photos

Surgery on a sea turtle at CMA.

When you visit CMA, you get a look inside their surgical suite; but the one they actually use is behind the scenes!

Sea turtle rehabilitation tanks.  We could not get any closer than this, and could just barely see some of the turtles when they swam to the top of their tank.  Even their keepers have very little interaction with them.  They stand behind those large pieces of ply wood when they feed them so that the turtles do not learn to associate people with food.  The first thing they are expanding, already in progress, is their sea turtle rehab tanks.

 A couple of ways they get baby animals to eat.  They do not have gag reflexes like we do.

One of their food prep areas.  We also got to peek inside the other where the scene with Hazel and the blender was filmed.

Winter and friends

This was a special treat.  Performing an ultrasound on Winter.

Nicholas!  He and his mother were found beached with severe burns on Christmas Eve in 2002.  His mother did not survive, and unfortunately, she was the only one who could teach him to be a dolphin so he has grown up a CMA resident, just like Winter!

A resident loggerhead at CMA.

We stayed in the Clearwater area for the night, and went to Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo before heading home the next day.  There we got to see a manatee hospital, and we got up close and personal with manatees in the underwater viewing area.  I spent most of the day out from behind the camera so I did not get any pictures.  We had a lot of zoo to cover!  A couple days after we got back home, our local Sea Turtle Preservation Society announced that it was partnering with our zoo to develop a sea turtle hospital right here in Brevard!  That's very exciting news, and what perfect timing for us.  I also discovered a SeaWorld program that airs Saturday mornings called Sea Rescue where you can see some of their successful rescue and releases.  We've had many opportunities to learn about sea turtles and manatees at our local environmental learning centers, and I know we will continue to have those opportunities in our community. 

My hope is that Laken is developing a passion for wildlife and a desire to protect the environment.

Catchy slogans

CMA: "Rescue, Rehab, Release"
Brevard Zoo: "Conservation through Education"

Connect the Dot Homeschoolers

As our preschool year of homeschooling is coming to a close, I'm still having a hard time identifying our home school style.  I thought I would have everything all figured out by the end of this trial run.  The truth is: I don't.  I do know that this journey is one we want to continue (for at least another year since you never can tell what the future may hold).  I have also noticed that we have fallen into a pattern with our homeschooling, but our schedule is nonexistent.  It's a lot like a preschooler if you ask me: unpredictable.  So, I realized that we did not need to conform ourselves to a style, or two, or three; but instead, I needed to define our own style.  When I stepped back to look at the big picture of our constructive chaos, I came up with our current homeschool style: we are connect the dot preschoolers.

We tried workbooks, and a reading curriculum; but always when Laken was ready and willing.  If she wasn't, I would take a step back, re-evaluate, and change directions.  I have no problem avoiding a subject area (i.e. math or reading) for months at a time if Laken is not interested.  When she is ready, she will grow by leaps and bounds very quickly.  I do believe that we often underestimate preschoolers.  I am a firm believer in the power of play, but I also believe they are capable of taking on much more as long as they are given adequate playtime as well.  At this age, I'm okay with Laken not doing "schoolwork" at all if she is busy learning through pretend play (even if this goes on for days or many weeks).  This is the first component of our connect the dot style: sometimes there are large gaps between the dots.

I am really not interested in Laken memorizing math, science, or history facts.  She's had more of an interest in learning to read than anything else so that is a skill I have worked on developing with her (on her terms, of course).  What I do hope for her is that she is learning to make connections.  

If you explore my blog, you will see that everything we do revolves around making these connections.  I have found that unit learning, and only studying one topic at a time, works best for us to achieve this outcome.  If her "work" is too busy with multiple topics or subject areas then it is much harder for her to see the big picture when she is done connecting all the little dots, or parts of our unit study.  This also means that I do not necessarily incorporate math, reading, writing, or any other subject as activities in our unit study.  If we are studying history in our unit study then that is probably the only subject area she will study during that unit.  Our ongoing Native American unit study is a good example of this.  After all we have done, do I quiz her on tribe names, regions, and customs?  Absolutely not.  In fact, she doesn't know any of those things.  Although she knows many of the customs, she would not be able to identify the tribe they are associated with; and especially since I don't believe she picked up any of the tribe names.  What she does know is that there are different tribes across North America, some build shelters and grow crops (she can also identify a chickee, hogan, longhouse, igloo, and plank house), others are hunters who live in teepees and follow herds, the different types of clothing they wore (cloth or animal skin), the different ways they all lived off the land, and how they were very different from our society today.  I call this connecting the dots and seeing the big picture.  

I realize that eventually Laken will have to do daily reading and math lessons, at the very least.  For now, this works for us; and she is learning so much more than I could have ever expected.  I am so happy she taught me that!

The Ultimate Guide to a Native American Unit Study

We used Evan Moor Native American History Pockets as a foundation for our unit study, but there are plenty of additional activities here to do a unit study without the History Pockets.  We are working on this at Laken's pace.  I am blogging along the way, dividing into four different parts.  Here, I am compiling the links.  As you can see, we are not quite finished yet.  I will try to work on getting our fieldtrips up soon, and I will continue to add to it as well.  I hope you will find this useful!

Native Americans Part 1

Native Americans Part 2

Native Americans Part 3

Native Americans Part 4

Fieldtrips

The Nez Perce: American Girl, Kaya, Unit Study

A Very Seussical Saturday

We officially celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday for the first time this year!  This time last year, I was readjusting to being home; and just starting to explore this idea of homeschooling, even though I had always considered it.  March is also a very busy month for us with Laken's birthday, and she was still only three last year.  So, I did see all the fun activities on pinterest, but I just added it to the list of "Things to do next year."  Well, I can't say we are any less busy this year, more so in fact, but I'm glad that I took the time to make good on my intent to celebrate with Laken.

OUR BOOK LIST:

The Cat in the Hat

Green Eggs and Ham

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

The Lorax

Go, Dog. Go!

Happy Birthday to You!

FUN WITH FOOD

I saw this on pinterest last year, but didn't end up coming across it this year.  I was in the kitchen making green eggs and ham, Laken was watching a Cat in the Hat cartoon, I saw a banana, and somehow retrieved the idea from my internal memory bank.  I got excited when I remembered we had strawberries, too!

She loved it, of course!

Yes, I made green eggs and ham.  Laken wanted them to look just like they did in the book.  But how to dye a fried, or sunny side up egg?  I decided to try putting a drop of food coloring on my griddle, and the egg soaked it right up.  We eat mostly natural food, and try to avoid dyes.  I am not disappointed that no one in our family ate much of their breakfast.  I am a little disappointed that we ruined perfectly delicious organic eggs and canadian bacon with food coloring.  This was a first, and a last, for us; but at least we can say we tried it!

LEARNING ACTIVITY

I decided on goldfish graphing.  You can find the goldfish graph here.  I was excited to see that the colored goldfish are made with natural dyes.  We prefer Annie's cheddar bunnies as an alternative to goldfish, but I can bend the rules occasionally.  For my homeschooler, I laminated the graph so it can be reused; and she used dry-erase crayons to color it.

CRAFTS

We made baked cotton ball truffula trees!

I used neon food coloring to get the colors I wanted.

Going in the oven.

While the cotton balls were baking, we went on a nature walk to collect sticks for our tree trunks.  Painting the tree trunks didn't hold her attention for very long, though.

Laken adored her truffula trees!  

When she was done using them as props for play, I made a sensory bin out of just the baked cotton balls.  She loves cracking open the truffulas!







I really hoped to do a traffic light craft for Go, Dog. Go! But Laken obviously had her fill of crafts for the day.  I am still hoping to do this with her soon!

Here are a couple you can choose from:

Paper plate traffic light

Tissue & contact paper traffic light
window art

For bedtime, we read Happy Birthday to You! for Dr. Seuss; which is something we usually do on Laken's birthday... now less than three weeks away!