We're Studying the Ocean

We're tying up some loose ends here in our homeschool. L is on track to finish up his first grade work in the next week or so, which is amazing, really, when I consider how much time I've spent sick this year. We'll take maybe a week off, and then dive into second grade, with V doing some preschool work as well.

In the meantime, we've started a unit on the ocean, which may take up the better part of the summer. We're landlocked, here in north Texas, but we've planned some field trips to the aquarium, the fish store, and maybe a fish market.

Our kitchen renovation is at that horrible stage where we have stuff all over the house, so I've moved us to the back porch for school, until the kitchen is done, or it gets too hot to tolerate, whichever comes first. (We have finally gotten the cabinets ordered, and we're hoping to finish up in the next month or so.)

I put up some ocean themed fabric over the windows for fun, and set up a little activity center with shells and shell identification books, among other things.

Ocean activity center.

Since we don't have a real beach, we fabricated a pretend one, shown here, with seashells and sand toys.

Sand box "beach."

We're relying heavily on the awesome DK Eyewitness books and movies, as well as another great DVD series which I'll be reviewing shortly.

As usual, Pinterest is bursting with cool ocean themed ideas. (You can check out my ocean themed Pinterest board here.)