Lesson 7: Putting it All Together on an Ocean Cruise: Build Your Own Study Now!

7-3 The Research: Gathering What You Need

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Study Goodies Treasure Chest
Research Vessel Science Journal

With our framework in mind, let's begin our research. As Valerie points out in our textbook, How to Create Your Own Unit Study, it's often enriching to detour along opportune tangents. On the other hand, we can easily be distracted from reaching our goals without a good, yet flexible, plan.

There are so many potential types of goodies you can include that I've designed for you a Study Goodies Treasure Chest which you may want to let your children rummage through, checking off the activities which they would like. This will give you a better idea of what kind of activities they enjoy, let them be a part of the planning, thus, make them more receptive participants.

Now for our own study's resources. This kind of brainstorming would be a great application for one of those mindmapping diagrams we discussed in Lesson 5. You may want to familiarize yourself with the concept again. If you need to jump start your brain, a search engine check for terms like "unit study" ocean can turn up some sites who've already put together extensive outlines you may get some use out of like: http://www.libsci.sc.edu/miller/Ocean.htm and http://home.fuse.net/mansfield/marybeth....

Proceeding on our own, we can come up with more material than we can handle in no time. The following list may seem to be careening our study out of control at times but keep in mind that it is a smorgasbord from which you can pick and chose or even use as inspiration for additional resources of your own. We'll put some semblance of order to these in the next section.

To get the brainstorms thundering, I pored over My Sixth Grade Super Workbook. Any grade in this series should have plenty of applicable pages. I perused the titles under the curriculum index inside the covers and came up with a couple dozen likely pages to which I added resources from other sources to stock all subject areas. Any items below which do not list the reference source are pages I found in the workbook:

• Language Arts is well represented with the literature emphasis we'll look at later. Here are a few other ideas:

  • English - while pages didn't support the ocean theme, it would be a good time to go over proper nouns and capitalization. I'm thinking of creating a large, simple map of the world – or maybe just the coastlines our "ship" will be sailing. As a handwriting exercise Jen could create city and country labels of major ports along the route. Most of our language arts will be reading and recitation from literature related to our theme which we'll delve into later.

  • Reading provided a number of worksheets on sea creatures and seabirds which I know Jen will enjoy.

  • Vocabulary - Unit studies lend themselves well to creating vocabulary lists. Check Heart of Wisdom's helpful page on Notebooks http://homeschoolunitstudies.com/Ancient... especially for vocabulary work.

  • Read or write poems about oceans . . . maybe a haiku on water or on sea creatures. A search of an e-library like American Poems Online Library http://www.americanpoems.com would help.

  • Create a skit or short play based on an incident in the life of a historical person studied. You could incorporate the performance into a talent night in the ship's theater.

  • How about a good movie? For younger "sailors" The Little Mermaid would be a fine choice with many related activities available. For us, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea would be an adventurous choice with lots of food for thought. A comparison to the book would also be a great activity if we have time to read it. An abridged version or favorite excerpts readings is certainly doable. We can probably find Internet teaching resources to go with it, too.

  • Send students on a scavenger hunt . . . on the Internet. Have them look up useful information on search engine words like: Bowditch, "celestial navigation" "Robert Ballard", "Marianas Trench", sextant, astrolab, Odysseus, or any words and phrases that fit your own focus. Offer a prize for the best "finds" or promote team work to put together the best collection. Have the scavengers give a presentation, linking and organizing all words as best they can. You could have a round robin storytelling. One person would start the story using one of the words. The next person continues the tale weaving in a different word from the scavenger list. Continue until the last word is used and the story wrapped up.

• Social Studies had the most entries in our Super Workbook with pages on topics like:

  • Greece and Rome - ancient seafaring peoples which could branch off into studies related to their empires, for example.

  • Island Nations & Coastlands - a study focusing on island life, in depth on countries like Japan, Great Britain. Many European pages in the workbook implies this might be a good time to do an overview of Europe focusing on waterways, trade, defending coastlines, or sea exploration. Peninsula nations works, too, but I'm starting to drown in too much of a good thing. I'm starting to narrow down our family's choice of topic to a European cruise, I think. You may chose another route for your study.

  • Pages on great religions opens the possibility of the spread of religion by boat. St. Paul's missionary journeys comes to mind. My Bible has some excellent maps showing his criss-crossing of the Mediterranean Sea(which is another possible study tangent).

  • Create an historical timeline of oceanic events through the ages. In our textbook, How to Create Your Own Unit Study Valerie presents some excellent guidelines for creating useful timelines to accompany your unit studies.

• Kinesthetics, Nutrition & Health - workbook pages even have potential. In fact, it spurred the original idea of a cruise ship theme for the study. Try morning exercises "on deck" followed by a "pool side" breakfast with nutrition facts presented as a cruise ship activity. If a pool isn't handy (a wading pool in the backyard will do), why not breakfast & nutrition exercises gathered around the bath tub or a blue sheet spread on the living room floor?

  Additional kinesthetic activities include swimming, bathtub activities along with those and morning calisthenics on the "pool side deck".

• Science has many ocean-related pages in our workbook to select from. Other good sources for science material include:

  • A breathtaking array of educational resources in all subject areas is now available from www.ed.gov/free offered by various government agencies. Science alone listed over 100 resource links from agencies like NASA, NOAA, Dept of Energy. Each of these links is packed with exciting ocean facts and information. We've even included some cool naval discoveries. I decided to check out the Navy's site with facts and activities under headings like: research vessels, habitats, ocean life, water , regions, and ocean in motion, and resources. Many pages with illustrated -- sometimes animated -- facts followed by a quiz would be a good set of activities for "work days" aboard a research vessel or visits to "ports of call". URL:http://www.onr.navy.mil/focus/

  • Water study is a natural. Many good references on water. I often use Usborne's Essential Science for grass root material like this. Several easy readers cover water as well for our literature connection.

  • A huge packet of free educational materials I'd requested from PBS' Newton's Apple provided background and experiments on drinking water which I think I'll try to fit in.

  • The physical science introduction from The Core Values Series: What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know will give good brief descriptions on several tangential topics

  • An old World Book encyclopedia set I enjoyed when I was in school provide excellent background on Oceans. On line encyclopedias will do nicely.I decided to do a basic introduction to the physical science of oceans using the encyclopedia and some sections from What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know. I also had a supplemental resource book called Oceans for many years which I found in a used curriculum sale. See what you can find!

  • Peeking at Navigation in the encyclopedia, I thought this may be a topic I could work into Math; however, the use of Trigonometry makes it better suited for advanced high school math so I leave that to other home educators. Since we needed to introduce geometric concepts of angles I could show some of the images demonstrating navigation techniques. I also found some great practical information on navigation. Though written for adults, many interesting facts could be gleaned from Bowditch -The American Practical Navigator at http://www.irbs.com/bowditch/ This is a table of contents page for an ebook free online. It does require the readily available Adobe Acrobat reader. I'll plan to pull some introductory material on the art & science of navigation mainly from the first chapter. There are many good -- if advanced/mature reading & comprehension level – chapters including ones on the math behind navigation techniques. I even got a brain-twisting quote discussion (and studying double negatives):

    He who has never been lost
    is no navigator

  • Internet sites on ocean research posed interesting possibilities. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute's educational offspring: "The Jason Project" at http://www.jasonproject.org has many activities and information we can choose from. The Ocean Planet at the Smithsonian's site http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ocean_plane... is another good resource. Also, this International Research Vessel site I just found at http://www.cms.udel.edu/ships/ provides potential for online connections to a research vessel simulation.

• Math offers a number of potential ocean-going tangents:
  • checking accounts, bills, statements which could be springboards for simulating the finances of paying for a cruise. You or older students could devise the various billing statements and accounting procedures for the cruise, create personal "checks" stapled together to make your checkbook & register to pay for the vacation if you are planning a fun cruise instead of scientific.

  • metric system conversions could be used by older students to calculate measurements made by younger students using an old favorite: whale rulers! Jen and I once made copies of pages showing the length differences of types of whales. We crawled around measuring walls, doors, each other's heights with a set of "big whale rulers" (close to 1 foot) and "baby whale rulers" (about an inch long). We then converted our whale units to inch/foot measurements. Metric conversions would be a great joint exercise as well. You may even want to make a whale/metric conversion chart.

  • geometry introduction to angles from What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know and the Key To Geometry series of workbooks. (I tried several standard math programs without success. For many years Jen seemed to respond well to these two low-key approaches with custom-designed practical math problems for more depth.)

  • I'll see if I get some ideas for creating relevant word problems as I read through the material for this study.

• Arts & Crafts applications could include :
  • Creating a shadowbox of a sea-going scene from one of your readings

  • a model of a tall ship while studying the various types of ships

  • a painting or sketch of a seascape

  • a study of great seascapes

  • With our science emphasis, I think we'll study diagrams and artwork for scientific and technical work. At the library, I remember seeing a general book on professional art which covered this topic. I could pull in some material directly from it.

• Thinking Skills is an area I decided to address based on The ABCs of Books and Thinking Skills, A Literature-Based Thinking Skills Program. To practice classification (and handwriting) we could dictate/provide a list of coastal countries, cities, bodies of water to sort, then place in the proper spots on our cruise map.

Well, that was a large chuck of research time yielding a lot of potential work. I think we're looking at a set of cruises maybe one a week for a number of weeks covering most of the coast land countries of the world by the end. You may chose a single study for one area. Or see how popular the first study is . . . then decide how to proceed.

For the literature connection, I did a quick search of our ever-growing home library and came up with these likely reads and some possible spinoff tangents:

• Seabird by Holling Clancy Holling If you haven't read Holling's books please try one today! Paddle to the Sea might also work. These books have wonderful little sidebars in the margin covering topics from whaling to island formation.

• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell presents great character qualities while giving insight to the way of living by the sea.

• Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry is a Newberry winner about a Polynesian boy who finds the courage to overcome his fear of the sea. It could be a good starting point for a "Courage" character trait to your study.

• Oliver and the Oil Spill by 9-year-old Aruna Chandrasekhar is a National Written and Illustrated By . . . Award winner which is not only an excellent read but could spearhead an environmental aspect to your study.

• Troll Biographies like Captain James Cook is one of many biographies that could be used to learn more about famous explorers, navigators, sailors.

• Whalesong by Robert Siegal is a mesmerizing journey into the world of whales.

• Carry On Mr. Bowditch was a favorite for us which introduced many aspects of navigation on a readable middle-grade level.

National Geographic magazines are a continual source of imagery and information for many studies. This cruise will really benefit from a display of appropriate mags at each "port of call" as well as ocean, sea creatures, and water articles.

Periodicals like Sailing, Islands and other sea-going magazines could provide good materials.

Check educational TV stations for suitable documentaries.

Comparing the movie to its book was a great discussion source for us many times over the years. A few movies/books to consider:

• Treasure Island

• Gift of the Sea

• Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea

• The Little Mermaid

• Moby Dick

• Biographies/Miniseries: Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook

• Mutiny on the Bounty

• The Old Man and the Sea

Poems could include The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and for younger readers The Mermaid and Other Sea Poems For ocean going poem ideas check the ocean unit study we mentioned: http://www.libsci.sc.edu/miller/Ocean.htm

Don't forget your local library . . . and the cyber libraries. To add to the cruise atmosphere a tape, CD, or a DVD with natural sea sounds helps.

Some Additional Material Sources:

For younger students, Golden Step Ahead Books offer appealing activity pages on all subjects. A quick scan through some will likely reveal a page or two on a tangent to the ocean theme.

Evan-Moor award winning educational products offer many resources in all subjects and great supplementary material to augment studies. We've particularly enjoyed their thematic books which supplemented many a unit study.

For information on the countries you'll visit, use a World Almanac, a countries of the world resource book, or material mentioned in the previous two lessons. I could also look in my usual book catalogues – Rainbow Resource Center, Scholastic's Every Teacher's Thematic Booklist , Sundance, Chinaberry (They have a sumptuous audio tape on the Odyssey which fits the Greek/Roman tangent) – but I think I've got enough to start putting it all together.

Field Trips could fit into this type of study beautifully. Consider a visit to an art museum featuring seascapes, visit the beach if you have one close by. If any ships give tours, this would be a great addition.

You may want to set up your car as your ship and make excursions around the area your various ports of call.

There are unlimited possibilities here!

This may be a good time to discuss your plans with your ship's crew/passengers – with as much or mysteriously little detail as you like. Let them have input on the name of the ship, itinerary, projects if you like. We decided to name our vessel "The Nautilus" after the ship in our movie selection.

To organize work and inspire greatness, I devised an all-purpose page called Research Vessel Science Journal for any written work.

Now to whittle away to see what we'll actually have to put on it.

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