Swimming Balloon Squid

Squids swim backwards?!?! Yep, they sure do. Of course, my son asked, “How do they see where they’re going?”

“I don’t think they do,” I replied and told him it was probably like when he swims on his back. This was definitely something to ponder.

To begin learning about squid, we read a Step Into Reading Level 3 book by Shirley Raye Redmond.

It’s hard to say what impressed us most about her account of these mysterious creatures:

• That the giant squid’s eyes are as big as a human head.
• Or that if stretched out on a baseball field, one end of the giant mollusk would touch home plate and the other would extend all of the way to the pitcher’s mound.

WHOA, that's cool!

When we wrapped up the book, I rescued a pop-up water bottle lid from the recycling and grabbed a balloon. We headed into the bathroom and filled the tub with water. It was time to simulate how the squid swims.

(This is the second activity we’ve done from Cindy A. Littlefield’s book Awesome Ocean Science! Investigating the Secrets of the Underwater World. It’s jam-packed with great activities for ocean-interested kids.)

Following the instructions, we filled our balloon with water. Then, my son pinched the neck of the balloon closed tightly while I carefully pulled the mouth of the balloon up over the pop-up bottle lid (making sure it was in the closed position before).

Now we put our little squid in the bathtub and pulled the pop top open. Hmmm. What was supposed to happen is the force of the water coming out, would send the balloon shooting backwards through the water, emulating how a squid swims.

Unfortunately, our balloon moved very little, which I credit to the fact that we used a regular party balloon instead of a water balloon, which would have enabled us to fill it up a lot more.

So we improvised.

Instead of filling the balloon with water, I filled it with air. I blew up the balloon, my son pinched the neck tight and I added the closed water bottle lid. Then, we put the balloon in the bathtub. While it didn’t sink beneath the water, the way a true squid swims, when my son popped up the lid, SWOOSH!! the balloon shot backwards all over the tub like a rocket launcher.

Success! 

Sponge-stamped Lungs “Art”

What’s that they say about the best laid plans? Well, whatever it is, it applies to this activity, which did not go quite as I had planned. Regardless, the end result was fantastic and my son still learned a lot.

First, we talked about lungs and read Breathe In, Breathe Out: Learning About Your Lungs. The book provided the right level of detail, without being too complicated, for my son to understand what lungs do, what they’re made of, and why they’re so important.

Then, we painted a pair of lungs that I’d made (download a PDF here). Initially, we tried imprinting the image of bubbles onto our lung pages. Unfortunately, the prints were nearly invisible. (sigh) Time for “Plan B.” 

I grabbed a household sponge and we used it as a stamp with some watered-down red tempera paint. The sponge left a wonderful texture on the lungs.

Afterwards, my son dabbed his finger in blue paint to add the air sacs (alveoli) at the end of the bronchioles.

Since we had to let the lungs dry and the evening was jam-packed, we set the activity aside until the next day.

When we returned, our painted lungs were ready to cut out. Once this was done, my son colored and cut out the windpipe, and then glued all the pieces to posterboard.

Lastly, he added labels for the different parts, referring to a drawing in Nettleton’s book. I had to smile later when I overheard my son explain to his little brother what the picture was. “You have lungs too!” he said enthusiastically.

Post-It Page Marker Math

I love Post-It® notes. So does my son. I’m not sure what either of us thinks is so special about them, but whenever our learning activities involve Post-Its, we BOTH have fun. This activity is no exception.

I bought a pack of multi-colored Post-It Page Markers at the store and designed three pages for my son to stick them to. Each page has a different number on it (i.e. 12, 25, 60).

On the Post-Its I wrote a variety of math problems (addition, subtraction, and even a few easy multiplication ones). Each pad of page markers had problems with answers that matched to different pages.

It was up to my son to answer the problem and stick the Post-It Page Marker to the right page, giving the lion a mane, the hedgehog quills, or the child hair.

My son had loads of fun with this activity, pushing himself to get each problem right. When he answered wrong, he knew it. There was no page for that marker! He recalculated, and found the marker’s home.

My son solved 33 problems doing this activity (15 for the lion page, 10 for the hedgehog, and 8 for the child)!!

Want to do this activity with only one page? Simply write a variety of problems, many with the answer that’s on the page and other problems with answers that are not. Challenge your child to match-up the right problems and reserve the ones with the wrong answers.

Download the pages I made here.

You Be the Author & Illustrator [Ants Activity]

It’s a guarantee that any time we’re outside, we’ll stop to stare at the ants. My kids have always seemed fascinated by these tiniest of insects in our driveway.

The other day, my son and I read a great book about an ant walking along a railroad track and the switchman determined to save him from a seemingly inevitable head-on crash with an approaching train.

Its rhyming text has a rhythm, its ending is comical, and the book’s illustrations are wildly expressive and imaginative. If you’re looking for a fun fiction picture book about an adventuresome ant, this certainly fits the bill.

Download this PDF here.
Print pages 1 and 2 and flip over.
Print pages 3 and 4 on the back.
Fold and staple.

When we’d finished reading, I flipped back a few pages and asked my son to show me the rhyming words, pointing out that they were the last words in each line. Now it was time for my son to write his own rhyming ant story!

I gave him a book I’d created, printed on cardstock, folded, and stapled in the middle.

We started with the “illustrations” first. My son used an ink pad and his fingerprint to make ants on each page of the book (i.e. one ant on the first page, two on the second, etc.). He simply lined three fingerprints up and drew on antennae and legs. Voila, ants!

Now that the ants were added, it was time for some creative writing. Each page of the book I made has a beginning line that ends in the number of ants on that page. It was up to my son to think of a word that rhymed with those numbers and write a sentence where the rhyming word would fall at the end.

My son can easily match rhyming words into pairs, but coming up with them on his own was a challenge. I had to help him a little with clues. As we worked on the pages, I reminded him that the story was a progression. For example, he couldn’t say the ants saw something blue on page two and never tell readers what blue thing they saw on future pages; the reader would be left wondering.

This was a lot of brainstorming and more writing than son would normally do, but he stayed at it and was so proud of the finished book that he called a “meeting” at bedtime to read it aloud to the entire family. Success!

To reward my son for all his writing, we also made one of the characters from his book – Bob the Ant out of spray-painted plastic spoons, black pipe cleaners, and two googly eyes.

You can find the complete directions for this craft on Danielle's Place of Crafts and Activities on the Bug and Insect Crafts for Kids page. (Variation: We didn’t cut our spoons, but rather just layered one on top of the other.)

Making Waves ... in a bottle

We are totally land-locked here in the Midwest. To say that the ripples of water on the surface of lake water are waves is downright ridiculous; but that's the closest thing we've got to them. Perhaps this is why my son has a fascination with the ocean, because it’s a complete mystery to him.

To teach him about ocean waves, first we read a great non-fiction book. This is the second time we’ve read a book from the Tell Me Why, Tell Me How series (the last time was when we learned about the seasons changing). Wil Mara’s book has LOADS of great information, perhaps a little more than we needed! We only read the first 15 pages.

My favorite light-bulb moment was when I read aloud “A wave does not really start in the water, but in the sky!” and my son burst out with a “what?!?” We read more. Wind energy makes waves!

Mara’s book also taught us the names for a wave’s highest and lowest points.

Now it was time to make some waves!

What you need

A clear, thin-necked bottle with a cap (I used a bottle of sparkling lemonade.)

Corn Syrup

Vegetable oil

Blue food coloring

What to do

Pour corn syrup into the bottle until it’s about 1/5^th full. Add a drop of blue food coloring. Swirl the bottle to mix the food coloring into the syrup. Then, add the same amount of vegetable oil to the bottle.

Now put the cap on.

Turn the bottle on its side and slowly lower the neck. Watch the bottom blue syrup layer as a small wave builds and crests in the neck (which is your pretend beach) of the bottle. Now slowly lower it back down, sending the wave back out to the ocean.

Oh yeah. This was fun!

CREDIT: The “Breakers in a Bottle” idea came from Cindy A. Littlefield’s book Awesome Ocean Science! Investigating the Secrets of the Underwater World. This book is 113 pages of hands-on activities all about the ocean. There's no telling how much fun you can have with your kids, thanks to this book!