Free Homeschool Unit Studies:

Ocean Creatures

Our free homeschool unit studies bring water and ocean creatures together to make an irresistible combination for any kids aged 5-7 – so long as you don't mind the bathroom getting wet!

Teaching children is easy when you get them on your side. We love this ocean creatures project.

Like all our free homeschool unit studies, you will actually cover a whole range of learning 'targets.' Depending on where your child's interest take you, you'll cover:

• Homeschooling science - including some great free water experiments
• Geography - with lots of activities to find out ocean facts
• Art and craft skills - from painting to making an origami whale
• Reading

So, where do you start?

With your child, of course! You have to go where your child's interest is and adapt this ocean creatures homeschool unit study to them.

First, we took the largest sheet of poster card we could buy. BIG is always best with small children. Wallpaper lining paper would be great.

As you can see, we've painted the waves on the card and then got messy sticking our fingers in paint to make white fingerprint 'wave crests.'

You can make this as 'hands-off' as you like; we work best as a team so you'll find all our free homeschooling unit studies usually involve me in some gluing, sticking and cutting as appropriate!

How about going down to the beach – there's lots of free homeschooling stuff just waiting on the tide line to be collected!

Ocean Creatures

Sequins make great eyes for an octopus:

Or you could put them on fish and add some flower shapes and gold barring for scales:

You'll see from my affordable homeschooling advice, there is one area I don't think you should skimp on. Top quality craft materials are a must for homeschool unit studies or any other projects you work on, like our home school science model solar system.

Ocean creatures look good in felt too! Here's a hammerhead shark:

Homeschooling Unit Studies Activities

Help Save Ocean Creatures

If you want a fantastic way to inspire your kids to start this homeschooling unit study, watch this true home video of the rescue of a humpback whale from fishing nets. It's so amazing; the whale even comes back to say thanks!

Art And Craft

Kids love drawing! What a shame so many of them get put off by school…

• Ocean Creatures stencils are fun.
• How to Draw Sharks and other Sea Creatures helped us with outline shapes.
• You can get stamps of ocean creatures to use with ink stamp pads and leave impressions of killer whales, dolphins and seals all over the place!
• Pasta shapes, red lentils and kidney beans make an unusual free shark collage.
• Shirley tells you how to make some great sparkly pink and yellow sea anemones using toilet rolls and plastic bags in her page on sea anemone craft.
• Origami is fun. You can easily make a homeschooling origami whale, either by following instructions from a book or by getting an origami Ocean Creatures World kit. We added a silver foil shiny spout and a stick-on eye.

DVDs

There are some great DVDs of ocean creatures which bring this free homeschool unit studies project to life.

• Watching David Attenborough's The Blue Planet got us fascinated with ocean creatures like Anglerfish and how they attract their prey.



• We watched a fantastic homeschooling documentary about going down in a deep-sea submersible. All aspects of that appealed, from the frilled shark to the piglet squid.





• We enjoyed Free Willy too. My homeschooling diary from October records that we spent the whole of one day with everyone being whales – krill for lunch - hmm!

Homeschool Unit Studies: Science Experiments

What an ideal way to add water into the equation and learn all sorts of free homeschooling science!

• You can fill your bath full of ocean creatures and play the game: Does it float or does it sink? ("Properties of materials" for those who do teacher-speak homeschool unit studies).



• If you squeeze the bubbles out of a sponge, you'll be able to work out why 'floaters' sink too.
• You can make metal ships out of tin foil, divide the inside into cargo holds with bits of cardboard and work out how load effects which end sinks first. (Physics for free as part of homeschool unit studies.)

Field Trips for your Homeschool Unit Studies

This is a must activity to get the most out of your homeschooling unit studies.

• The London Aquarium left us with memories of glass catfish, a sleeping leopard shark and feeding manta rays.
• We met Bruce, the black-tipped reef shark, on a homeschooling trip to a Sea Life Sanctuary.
• Monterey Bay Aquarium in California may be a little far away for some of us, but since it has a live Kelp cam we can all enjoy virtual views of ocean creatures in a kelp forest for free!
Watch Live Kelp Cam at Monterey Bay Aquarium Now!

Models

If you've got a child who likes making models, you've got an ideal way of adding design and technology to your ocean creatures homeschooling unit studies.

• We used K-Nex to make a 94cm shark.
• We made a free homeschooling submersible out of a cereal packet body with cardboard egg box lights and a vegetable net fish-catcher.



• If you have older children, you can add to your homeschooling unit studies by making this fantastic free ocean diorama. All you need is a shoebox to create your own secret undersea world.

Books

So many, and mostly fabulous! Our top homeschooling hit list:

• Sounds of the Wild: Ocean - or equivalent – so your child can hear the sounds of the humpbacks and the clicks of the merry dolphins.
• The Whales' Song by Dyan Sheldon for those who know it.
• William read one of his first words from The Whale Is Stuck book. It was S-P-L-A-T apparently; and it does show you should be able to add reading to the homeschooling skills you acquire.
• We used real-life objects to bring books to life. You could use fossilised shark's teeth, sea urchins, (collected on the beach), or, if you are as lucky as us, some baleen from a dead whale.

Don't forget our other free unit studies: Homeschool Science: Rainforest for Kids Activities.

So I hope you can see that sea creatures make an ideal free homeschool unit studies project, with your child learning all sorts of things and having fun at the same time.

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