14 November 2011

Whales and Sharks

This fall, we've had some fun with the higher reading group doing some non-fiction animal activities. These have been in a pile to share, so we apologize. :) We don't have any pictures, but we will do our best to share.

We started with learning about sharks while we were learning the 'ar' sound. Sharks seem to be one of those things that really just grab the kiddos attention. They couldn't get enough of reading about sharks, looking at pictures of real sharks, and even watching a fun video. We began by reading several books about sharks, and made a chart of all of the cool and interesting facts that we learned. Next we completed this shark activity.


We then read this little sheet that the kids loved, since it had such great pictures. They also loved that the got to take home a little mini-poster to teach their families about sharks. We read over this several times, and by the end, the kids were able to read most of it by themselves. (Keep in mind this is the high reading group, so we have several reading at a second grade level.)

Last we each did a shark report to really share what we had learned about sharks. These turned out sooo cute, I wish I would have remembered to photograph them. Next time!

{Also, I apologize that the jpeg cuts off the side of the picture. Drives me all kinds of crazy! The actual document is ok though.}
Click below for copies of all of these for yourself!
SHARK ACTIVITIES

Later on, we learned all about whales when we learned the 'wh' sound. This came right after the sharks, which the kids loved. It was really fun to compare and contrast whales and sharks, and to discuss the similarities between the two.

We followed the same basic pattern by starting with reading several books about whales. We also found some really great videos on you tube. HERE is a great one of whales breaching. Of course there were few if any of our kids who had seen this, so it was really fun to watch the kids watching them. We also watched a great video of Beluga whales singing, which was another really exciting idea for the first graders. Unfortunately when I went to link it, it had been removed. But I recommend sharing something similar if you're learning about whales.

We then completed this whale activity.

{Sorry, it doesn't seem to want to rotate for me. }

The kids loved this whale text that we read together, and loved reading about different kinds of whales, and looking at their different pictures online as well.


At the end of our whale activities, we also created whale reports. We had a great bulletin board of our reports up that turned out so cute!


As mentioned before, we wrapped up by comparing and contrasting whales and sharks, and made this Venn diagram.


Make sure to grab copies for yourself!
WHALE ACTIVITIES
WHALE & SHARK VENN DIAGRAM

We hope you find some of these useful! Tune in later this week for some bat and owl activities. Have a great night!

Some clipart courtesy of Scrappin' Doodles.

15 comments:

  1. I was not able to download the shark activites. Everything else worked! Thank you for sharing!
    First Grade Delight
    imgoingfirst@gmail.com

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  2. Wow! Awesome tree maps!! :) Thanks!

    I was trying to open the shark activities and I kept getting a google viewer error message! Anybody else?

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  3. I had the same problem with the shark activities. The whales worked fine. Thanks for sharing!!

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  4. So sorry about the link. It is all ready now :)

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  5. Great activities for those readers who need that challenge! Thanks so much!

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  6. Those are great resources! I am sure my kids will love them. I always have trouble with science (don't have a science curriculum) and I'm always looking for fun things to do with them! They will LOVE this stuff. Thanks for sharing!!!! =)

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  7. So glad you all found these helpful! Thanks for your sweet comments :)

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  8. I love these! However, I just wanted to let you know, on the sharks activity, it says loose their teeth instead of lose!

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  9. Thanks so much ladies! I am going to use these activities with one of our autism spectrum children who LOVES whales :)

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  10. Thank you so much for these resources! Our library in limited in the books available for 1st and these were helpful :)

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  11. Thank you so much for these resources! Our library in limited in the books available for 1st and these were helpful :)

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  12. love you website ans these are pretty cool and super fun!!!

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  13. Love this, thanks so much! My son is writing an informative paragraph (1st grade) and this will help!

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  14. I realize you posted this several years ago, but we live in Dana Point, CA and I'm taking some kids (1st and kindys) to the headlands to view the grey whales that have been passing by the last few weeks. Thank you for this, it's perfect for writing down some facts and bonus is that we can submit it as one of our science examples to our homeschool EF. Thank you!!

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