Whales, Part 2

Today we "finished up" our study on whales. From The Mailbox's January Theme Book, we did several things including making a book about whale behavior (breaching, tail lobbing, etc.).

We had made some whales out of paper lunch bags, and they actually turned out pretty cute. (It's hard to see the blue one in the picture). We used these to discuss whale body parts and to demonstrate different whale behaviors.

Yesterday, we made these cute origami whales from DLTK.
The last thing we did was some demonstrations and experiments with salt water, fresh water, and "blubber" (we actually used lard). We got these ideas from The Mailbox Theme book, but I have seen the one with the "blubber bag" several places, including on-line. Basically, you use 2 ziplock sandwich bags to make a glove filled with lard. Then, you stick one hand in the "glove" and insert both hands in ice water. The hand in the "blubber glove" is protected from the cold and feels comfortable, while the other hand is painfully cold. Great demonstration!!! We also talked about the fact that penguins at the South Pole have blubber, too, and that is one reason they can survive in the extreme cold.

(added later...) Today we finished watching Free Willy and loved it! Besides being a great, touching movie, it also shows great footage of orcas. We plan on watching Free Willy 2 when we can get it from the library.