Every animal is like some animals and unlike others. Through a little detective work with objects, students will compare and classify the characteristics of animals with fur, feathers, scales, spines and more. In this introduction to marine food chains, students will explore four ocean habitats and learn about a food chain from each.
Tide pools are full of life.
Students compare their own adaptations to those of four tidepool animals, learning how they eat, move, see and protect themselves. The end of every cycle is only a beginning. Students will explore four ocean cycles while they dress a puffin in its breeding plumage, take a trip with a gray whale, get to know members of a kelp forest food cycle and explore the stages of an ocean animal's life cycle. Student volunteers are transformed into fishes, birds and marine mammals as the group learns why these animals come in so many sizes, shapes and colors. Using costumes, bones, pelts, teeth and baleen, students get to know some of the mammals that thrive off the Northwest coast and how they are adapted for survival.