Swimming Creatures Unit

Way back when the kids were in elementary school we studied swimming creatures for our science lessons and I started to collect all our lessons together, but never really finished that. So now, I’m updating that post and organizing it a bit better than I did initially. Partially because I went back to find something and I thought, oh no, that is not good. So, here is my updated Swimming Creatures Unit.

And there are affiliate links in here.

Or there will be once I wake up and finish updating this post. I’m going to schedule for it to go out, and then finish in the morning, yes Future Ticia 2024 is going to be a bit lazy…

I’m leaving the original text, because it can be an amusing bit of history to see what I thought all those years ago.

I was originally going to title this post whales and dolphins for kid, because dolphins are cute, and everyone loves whales, they’re so mysterious.  Then I started looking at what my kids were ACTUALLY interested in.  We didn’t spend all that much time on those animals, but a lot more time on other ocean animals.

Resources for Swimming Creatures Unit

Is it really a unit if you’re studying it for an entire year?

Okay, so we studied Swimming Creatures in first grade. These are the initial things I bought when the kids were in first grade:

• Apologia Swimming Creatures
• Swimming Creatures lapbook (the company is now out of business)
• Ocean Bingo, because my husband said, “Ticia you’re studying Swimming Creatures next year!” When we were on vacation, to be honest, we did not use this much. Though I did buy it partially because it had real pictures and each card had information about each animal on it. So that was a win
• Mixed sea shells
• Austin Aquarium Membership

Things I would add in now:

• Swimming Creatures Notebooking Journal– this is for the upper elementary, so I wouldn’t have used it with my first graders, but wanted to make sure to link to it, I’d use it for a strong reader in 2nd grade, but 3rd grade for sure
• Swimming Creatures Junior Notebooking Journal– it’s expensive to buy one for each kid, but worth it because it is set up to go with the curriculum (obviously since it’s from the publisher), and so the notes are clearly set up to help them learn how to take notes from the notebook

At the time I thought they were a silly expense and my plan of printing off a shared lapbook was a great idea. It wasn’t. I learned a few things that year:

• I like lapbooks, my kids do not.
• My kids each needed their own notebook. It had to be pre-made because adding in pages as we went did not work.

Learning about the ocean

I’d start any unit on ocean animals learning about the ocean first because that affects so much of ocean life.  We had several different lessons on this, exploring how the water moves, and why it moves that way.

• ocean currents, years later we recreated the experiment when we studied the Age of Exploration, so here is a second more in depth look at how ocean currents work (2024 Ticia is making note these two posts should be combined)
• How does ocean temperature affect water’s movement?
• deep water of the ocean
• layers of the ocean with this fun craft
• Florida Everglades craft
• Jacques Cousteau lesson– it’s good to learn about the famous oceanographer

Preschool Ocean Animals unit

I’m just adding in this one, back when the kids were in preschool we did an Ocean animals preschool craft book, and it was a lot of fun to put together, but it doesn’t solidly fit in any of these, so I’m just going to add it in as its’ own group.

Whales, dolphins, and other aquatic animals

I think the problem with this topic, is I like it more than the kids, my brain may have been messed with by watching lots of Star Trek IV (affiliate link) as a kid.  Be that as it may, I rather like the silly animals.

We started our study of whales with some whale sounds videos, and then measured how big is a whale and compared it to ourselves.

Okay, so I don’t know where to put penguins, because they don’t really fit anywhere. They’re not mammals, and they not reptiles or fish, so I’ll stick them in here, but I also have a Penguin Unit, that is currently just a booklist that I’m thinking to slowly turn into a unit.

Sharks and Rays

The amazing thing is despite having a son obsessed with rays and a son who thought sharks were pretty cool, the only posts I have on sharks is my son’s shark report.

• Manta rays

Sea Turtles

While technically sea turtles are reptiles, and would belong on my Reptile and Amphibians they’re also swimming creatures, so I’m going to add this in here, also I love turtles.

• Turtle book list
• Sea Turtle activities
• Identifying sea turtle lesson

Swimming dinosaurs

Technically, these are not dinosaurs, but let’s be honest we all call them dinosaurs. I think they’re called ancient aquatic animals.

• Prehistoric water dinosaurs
• Loch Ness Monster or Champy (Vermont’s Loch Ness Monster)– because one theory is that’s what they are, so that could be a fun assignment for your older kids to discuss

Crabs and Lobsters (Arthopods)

Are you ready for one of the most hilarious science lessons we ever had? One day we randomly found crawdads in our backyard, and that became a science lesson. Because what else would you do when you find random wildlife in your backyard?

Now that I think about it, this happened like three different times. Twice with live animals, and once with a dead animal. We did not attempt nature studies with the possum or skunk. Though our dog did attempt to make friends with the skunk with unpleasant results.

Oh, and the armadillo. We observed the armadillo.

But, back to our swimming creatures lessons.

• Crabs and Lobsters lesson
• Shrimp lesson
• Hermit crab lesson
• Crawdads lesson
• Horseshoe crabs

Mollusks, Sea Shell Unit

Not too surprisingly this was a very popular unit within our swimming creatures unit.

• Sea Shell sorting science lesson
• Shell nature study
• How to age bivalves lesson
• Sea shell classification
• Starfish lesson– starfish are not seashells, they are echinoderms, but I have ONE post for this chapter, so I’m going to include it here

Octopus and Squid, cephalopods

From looking at our ocean animals posts, my kids were very interested in octopus.  Like I probably have five octopus posts. Of course, there was also our brief attempt at My Father’s World Kindergarten which had an Octopus Unit.

• Octopus booklist
• Why do octopus change colors?
• How does an octopus move?

Sea cucumbers are vaguely related to octopus, or at least that’s the excuse I’m going to use, I could be completely wrong (I am), and just wanting to show off our fun sea cucumber models.

I was going to share my kids’ sea animal reports, but in all honesty, they’re just a bunch of proud Mom stuff (For the curious, Batman’s is on manta rays, and Superman’s is on sharks, I didn’t end up posting Princess’ report), and I don’t know it would help you plan much for your own kids.  Though you might get a laugh from Batman’s attempt at a manta ray out of recycled materials.

I’ll have to come back later and give you the kids’ projects on shells and various different crustaceans.  Those two both seem to have about 10 posts on that topic.  I personally find much more than 10 links in a round up post overwhelming, so I’m trying to limit the scope of these units

For all of the posts in this series head on over to Zoology for Kids.

This post first came out on July 23, 2014 (wow, almost exactly 10 years ago!)