Titanic activity for preschoolers

The Titanic exhibit is currently in town.  I thought it would be something fun for older Toad and I to do together.  I got What Sank the World's Biggest Ship as an introduction to the subject so we could learn a bit together before we went.





Younger Toad enjoyed it a lot too, and learned enough that walking through the library he found this DK book in the aisle, recognized it was the Titanic, and insisted we check it out.




Once we got home, even before we read the book, we had a long talk about the boilers on the ship and how they ran the motors and propellers and steam came out the smokestacks.  By now I was feeling guilty that I hadn't planned on taking him, so we went as a family on the day after Thanksgiving.  He did not behave all that great but it did seem to make an impression on him.  He's still talking about the iceberg in the exhibit.  I was glad for all the reading we did beforehand because there was not a lot of interpretation of the objects.  The kids were able to insert the objects into their memories of what we'd read and I think it would have been rooms of meaningless stuff if we hadn't done our homework.

There was a large picture of the boiler room in the exhibit. After our previous conversation about the boilers and pipes I thought younger Toad might enjoy a project designed around them.

I drew an extremely simplified version of the center of the ship on 12" X 24" paper.  I provided glue, aluminum foil 'boilers', pipe cleaner 'pipes" and cotton ball 'exhaust' to get glued down.

He enjoyed the project and we had to reread all our Titanic books several times after finishing.  He had a hard time with getting the pipe cleaners flat but enjoyed connecting the boilers to the smokestacks.

 

It would have been downright mean of me to break out the pipe cleaners and not let the older Toad play too so this is his interpretation of the project.

Below are some resources for elementary students that older Toad also did a few selected things from.

Here is the website for RMS Titanic who has salvaged the wreck and organizes the current Titanic exhibits.  If you click through to the learning center you can download a free educators guide (for K-12 students).

Older Toad also put together the Rick Geary postcard of the Titanic for a small paper model.

Magic Treehouse activities has a companion to Tonight on the Titanic.





We're finishing up our Titanic readings with T is for Titanic.  Teacher's guide to T is for Titanic.




They give each exhibit attendee a ticket with a brief biography of a real Titanic passenger.  At the end of the exhibit are the names of all the passengers organized by class and crew divided up into who survived and who died.  As a family (Grandma and Grandpa went too) three of us survived the tragedy and three of us did not.  Even though three of us "died" on our journey we all learned a lot and enjoyed the exhibit.


If you want to do this too here's the blank.  It's more fun enlarged if you want to redraw it.  This activity would also be fun for preparing for a cruise or a unit study about ships.

Blank Titanic

The companion post to this one, Titanic at Night, published later is here.

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US Cultural Exchange Package

We're participating in a US cultural package swap.  We just got our parcels out.  This is what was in them.

Older toad wrote a note with some things he wanted to say about our family and where we live.
We made soap (I forgot to put that in the picture) and 3 part montessori cards of all the tropical edibles in our yard.
Some squished pennies from those machines in our area that the toads love doing.
Postcards
Seashells
A placemat from the Columbia Restaurant that has some Cuban recipes on it.
Linger Lodge Road Kill Menu.
Temporary tattoos and a rack card from the Pier Aquarium.
A map from Lowry Park Zoo.
A Visitor's Guide to the Tampa Bay History Center.
A Visitor's Guide to The Museum of Science and Industry.
A Family Activity and Map from the Dali Museum.
An exhibition card for the St. Petersburg Crochet Coral Reef.
Booklet for the Chihuly Collection.
Discover Bays and Estuaries from Project Wet.
Boating and Angling Guide to Tampa Bay from the Florida Marine Research Institute.
Fishing Lines a beautifully illustrated fishing guide.  If you'd like to download your own copy go here.
An info sheet for Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE).

We're looking forward to seeing what we get.

Thanks to Melissa at Chasing Cheerios for setting this up!

Tampa Bay Staycation Tour

Slideshows of other people's vacations can be really boring...

So I thought I'd stick to the highlights of our recent staycation with links for those people planning on coming here or for those of you who like links to the education programming.  We get lots of tourists because it really is nice here.  I once posted on a large mommy listserve about vacation options for places to go for a mom and her toddler together as a vacation (back when I only had one tadpole).  My husband travels regularly and I thought it'd give the toad and I a change of scenery to go away while he was gone.  I didn't mention where we lived just asked for opinions on great places for a mom and kid to vacation.  There were 5 responses and every single person said the beach.  I sighed and we walked to the beach.

Here's our latest adventures.

Lowry Park Zoo - The animal above is an African okapi.  It's always one of my favorites to visit because they're so beautiful.  My husband hadn't been in three years so he had an especially good time.  Here's a link to the education page with PDF's for educational activities (look for self guided curriculum in the center of the page).  I took the opportunity of the vacation this week to start Zoo Story by Thomas French.  It's a book he wrote all about Lowry Park Zoo.  He used to be a reporter for the local newspaper and our recently reinvigorated Friends of the Library had him for a guest speaker at their one year anniversary which is where I picked up the book.  My grandmother used to take me to the zoo and I had not been to one in over 20 years until I had kids.  The author does a good job of talking about the specifics of this zoo and the philosophical implications of zoos in general.  There's a good bit of gender observations too which make for a good laugh.

Selby Gardens - This is only the second time we've been and we have had a lovely time both times. Here they have two PDF's for different ages to do a plant hunt.  I printed them out and attached them to handled paper bags for the kids to collect treasures (with strict instructions that treasure only comes off the ground and absolutely no picking).  I don't think they finished either one but they loved having an official place for all the seeds they found.  The PDF's were generic enough you could use them at a garden near you probably.  Also, they are known as a research institution so the website has lots of articles and resources available.

We went to the Dali for the first time since they relocated and expanded.  They did a wonderful job and the new museum was a great way to spend a morning.  My husband and I went with younger toad while the older was at preschool.  I hadn't taken him to a museum in years since they last time I did we both left in tears.  He was much better this time and enjoyed the scavenger hunt they provide the kids.

Museum of Science and Industry - Always lots to do there.  They have some online activities about water here.  They were having a kid's health fair on the day we went.  I picked up some great paper plates with the suggested portions illustrated and labeled.  The food pyramid never made a ton of sense but having portions divided into pie wedge fractions on a plate is easy to understand.  It looked like all the resources they had available at the fair were at the USDA's website here.

...and of course we went to the beach several times.  Grab your sunscreen and come some time!

Travel Ideas

 We're starting our staycation this weekend so my posts might become irregular.  We decided to do a staycation since the toads are not the best travelers.  We've made a no cooking and very little cleaning rule so hopefully it's a bit of a break as well as lots of fun checking out the fun things to do here.

If you are planning a trip in your area or across the country this year, check out this list of organizations.  You can search their websites for ideas that you wouldn't find on the travel websites.






American Association of Museums - Here's a PDF of all accredited museums in the country.

American Association of Zoos and Aquariums - Here's the list.  Their education section has helpful links for studying polar bears and elephants.  Here's the kid's section.

Association of Children's Museums - International list

America Public Garden Association - Searchable database.

Association of Living History, Farm, and Agricultural Museums - The list.

Association of Science and Technology Centers - The list.

National Park Service -  Get outside!  Here's the teachers section of their website.  Here's the kid's section.

National Registry of Historic Places - Their directory by state is more like a travelogue than simple list so it's still fun and educational even if you're not planning a trip.  Also, they have a whole section devoted to teaching with historic places here and their kid's section here.

If you've got a great resource for finding places to visit that I've left out please add it to the comments section.

Free Media for Homeschoolers

 I did a post last week about ways to save money homeschooling.  You can read it here if you missed it.  I wanted to break out some of the links for clarity.  This post is all about free media sources to supplement your studies.  I've enjoyed all these websites, some more than others, please preview as necessary for your family.



Primary source materials - These are mainly museums that put original documents up on the web.  There are so many more here, please add your favorites in the comments.
The British Library -
Gilder Lehrman - Gilder Lerhman Institute of American History
Library of Congress
Massachusetts Historical Society -
National Postal Museum - a division of the Smithsonian

Audio books and sound materials
Ambling Audio books 
Free Music Archive - free music recordings, audio stories and story books for kids through Kazoomzoom
Kiddie Records Weekly - Vintage kids records - really fun
LibriVox - Free audio books
Lit2Go - stories and poems as Mp3's 
Story Nory - Free audio books for kids
Wild Music - sounds exhibition from the Science Museum of Minnesota

Print books
Amazon freebies for Kindles
Baldwin Project for Children's Literature - ebooks of children's classics
Bartleby - Great books online
International Children's Libray - Mulit-lingual
Project Gutenberg - 40,000 free ebooks
Rosetta Project - Complete Library of kids books - great options for foreign language study
Wikibooks

Video
Early America - Short historical films
National Film Board of Canada 
PBS
TED talks
Top Documentary Films - Free documentary films
Wolfram Demonstrations Project - Science models

Some of everything
Open Culture

And last but not least, check with your public library.  Ours offer audio book and music downloads for free.

Post in the comments section any wonderful sources I've left out.

Enjoy!