Monday, January 16, 2012

Under the Sea Dioramas


For science this year we have been using the Neoe Biology II. It's working well and is fairly easy to adapt for the varying abilities of my 4, 6, and 8 year old. But I find it a bit simplistic and a bit monotonous at times.

Our underwater creatures lessons seem to have gone on forEVer. So,using some of the internet links in one of our Usborn books, I discovered thsi cool project:

http://www.amnh.org/ology/index.php?channel=marinebiology#

I had a super hard time finding the curlers to make the sponges. So we skipped that. And pom-poms (the cheerleader kind) were hard to find too. So we adapted the sea anemonea by using toilet paper rolls and strips of construction paper. My idea was to curl the strips of paper down using a pencil, but the kids found this very tedious. So our sea anemoneas turned out to look more like palm trees. Oh well.

Brain coral closeup.

We made these by sticking the radiatorre pasta in home made play dough and then painting it green. I recommend hollowing out the under side a bit to facilitate the drying process.

We did not use boxes for the background because I didn't have any on hand. We used large manila file folders. I opened up the folder and turned it so the center line was horizontal. Then I made a center cut in the bottom flap from the edge closest to me up to the horizontal line. Then I folded the two flaps over each other and stappled them together. This formed HALF of each diorama. Repeat this process and then fit the two halves together and secure with tape or staples.

This mad e agreat back drop forour diorama, which we then painted and dried before adding the sea life.

Here's a picture of another one

No comments:

Post a Comment