More ocean

After a 5 week study we finished oceans, and we learned a lot. Here are a few more pictures from some of our experiments/projects.

This experiment came from Bill Nye's ocean book. Did you know that a squid can squirt it's ink in the shape of it's body. That helps it to escape from prey. So we colored a picture of a squid and then the kids tried to get the "ink" to take the shape of the squids body. They couldn't do it, but it was a great reminder that God makes everything...and he created everything to work the way it does!

The following experiments are from our Awesome Ocean book...

Fill a tall glass almost to the top with water. Insert a drinking straw about 1" into the water and slowly blow a bubble. Both kids declared it's pretty easy. Now push the straw farther into the glass so that the end is just 1" from the bottom and slowly blow a bubble. The kids said it was much harder to do, because of the pressure.

We learned that every minute in the day (in most places) air presses against our bodies with nearly 15 pounds of force. It's equally distributed throughout our bodies so we don't notice it, unless the air pressure changes. (think about being in a plane and how your ears get blocked) In the ocean, changes in pressure are more noticeable, because water is much denser than air. As you can see in our experiment we filled a bowl with water, put a plastic bag up over our hand and wrists. (secure with a rubber band) Dunk your hand into the bowl of water and there is enough pressure to make you feel like your hand has been shrink-wrapped.

(and if you're noticing that the water looks white, I had a little accident! I was pouring coffee creamer into my coffee, and poured it into the wrong thing! Please tell me other people do things like this.) =)

Another pressure experiment...using a pushpin poke 4 holes in a water bottle. (vertically, and about 1" apart) Fill it up and set it down in the sink. Then observe how the water is coming out of the holes. The hole closest to the bottom makes the straightest stream...why? Because it's under the greatest amount of pressure.

One of our last days of our ocean unit was beautiful, so we went outside and painted some ocean scenery. We briefly talked about horizon lines thanks to this post! (if you are looking for art ideas, visit her blog, she has some great ideas)

The finished project..Brie's is on the top, Zeke's is on the bottom.

I think we all enjoyed our ocean studies. We could have easily made it a longer study! Imagine the fun we could have had if we actually lived near an ocean!