Why Oceans? Mostly because http://www.learningpage.com has sooooooooo much free things on their site, that it just lent itself to being the Jumping-off place in the studies. We will have to figure out something else for the other basic biomes (Habitats) such as Forrest, Deserts and so on. If you know of a great site with these items covered, please leave a note!
 

Z-man is cutting out a jellyfish (From: LearningPage.com)

All the kids intently cutting out the sea animals to put with their Mural of the ocean. (From: LearningPage.com)

These are the animals they colored and then cut out. (From: LearningPage.com)

This is a stack of "Fact Files" about the animals in the ocean. (From: LearningPage.com)

 What are we doing?  LearningPage.com's Ocean Unit has a mural of 15 or more sheets. You put them together on the will and you have a great background for your wall!

We decided to color the pictures in crayon. But we left the sky and ocean water (Backgrounds) white. Then, we grabbed some watercolors and slathered the pictures with blue watercolor paint. This emphasized to the kids that everything in the ocean is covered in water and that the water appears to change the color of things underwater. This began a discussion of light refraction, but we were done before we got too far and they are only 7 so.... (From: LearningPage.com)

Yes! It is yours truly working with the children!. DH took this photo.

S-Baby being ever so delicate with her painting.
(From: LearningPage.com)

Me again, being handed another masterpiece and putting them down to dry. (From: LearningPage.com)

A nice over-head shot from Dad. (From: LearningPage.com)

And this is the papers drying out on the tables. It really only took about 20 minutes for the to dry, and then we were able to hang them on the wall! (From: LearningPage.com)

Once we got it all taped up on the wall, we were able to tape our little ocean animals to the mural. (From: LearningPage.com)

Everyone gets in on the act, and this has really helped up to be closer, since all three children get to participate. (From: LearningPage.com)

I ran over to ABCTEACH.com to grab some word-wall words. I printed these out in color and taped them to the top and bottom of the mural to make a type of boarder. Looks like it worked realtively well, eh? (From: ABCTEACH.com)

I also grabbed some Surfing Bookmarks from ABCteach as well. These are just great, because the twins and the baby are reading so much now, that they need the bookmarks. Having them match the them of this unit study is just perfect! (From: ABCTEACH.com) I got the library card holder from a teacher supply store, not online. The ocean stickers I got from a dollar store, not online.

 

Ok, more later.......