We’ve kicked off another science unit with Real Science Odyssey. I’m using their Life Sciences k-2 curriculum as a guide to inspire our science each week.
This week we started learning about Cnidaria (pronounced nih-DARE-ia) which are things with tentacles like jellyfish and coral. We are fortunate to live about an hour and a half drive away from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so we escaped our routine for a field trip. We went on a Friday morning, which was a good decision because this incredible aquarium is packed on the weekends and school holidays.
One thing I love about homeschooling is that I get to learn alongside my kids. I am often more excited about what we are learning than they are. The world is such an amazing place. There is so much to learn, see, and do. Until my 30s I don’t think my brain was fully developed enough to understand how remarkable it all is and how little time we have in our lives to appreciate it all. As I introduce my kids to a wide feast of knowledge, I know that they won’t be able to digest everything just yet. They will take from our day of learning what they need at this moment in time, and that’s enough. And I will take what I need – and this time around, in my late 30s, it’s a lot.
Homeschool guru, Charlotte Mason wrote in her 20 principles for education,
“Education is the Science of Relations”; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of–
“Those first-born affinities
Charlotte Mason, Preface to a Philosophy of Education
“That fit our new existence to existing things.”
What this means is when we learn things in our own way and we apply what we’re learning to other contexts and make connections on our own – that is where the real learning happens. These are the bits of knowledge we don’t forget – because our brain has synthesized it and connected it to another piece of information we know. Charlotte Mason likens teaching that has already planned out all the connections the student needs to make as having the students eat pre-digested food.
Recently we had been reading about Carl Linnaeus’ 18th century system of classifying organisms that we still use today. Some of what we read really stuck in my brain. I learned that Carl Linnaeus approached classification differently because he compared the internal structures of organisms. On this trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I was curious how marine scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute can identify a new species in a deep sea canyon if they can’t bring it to the surface to dissect it to see what its structures are like inside. I also wondered why kelp and coral look so similar, even though one is a plant and the other is an animal. What are the features that define whether something is an animal or a plant in the underwater world? I asked a volunteer docent, who did not know the answers to my questions but flagged down a biologist to talk to me.
I learned so much from this exchange. First, Cnidaria is pronounced Nih-DARE-ia. Not SEA-nid-ria, as I had been saying. Second, aside from the differences at a cellular level (kelp has a plant cell with chloroplast) while coral has an animal cell), coral has tiny little tentacles that stun and eat prey. Kelp also has a root system while coral does not.
Third, I learned that coral and jellyfish are all Cnidaria, the phylum of aquatic invertebrates with stinging tentacles. What? Coral, that looks like a rock, is actually related to jellyfish? How?
As I said above, coral have little stinging tentacles on them to catch prey (plankton) as it drifts by. Jellyfish also have these stinging tentacles to stun prey. But also, jellyfish spend a chunk of their lives looking a lot like coral.
Have you ever seen the lifecycle of a jellyfish? Do not be dismayed if you have not. Until last week I had not either. Here is a sketch of the jellyfish life cycle from my nature journal.
As you can see from my lifecycle of a jellyfish – for a chunk of its jellyfish life, it is anchored to the ocean floor as a polyp, with tentacles waving in the water to stun plankton as it floats by, just like coral. As the polyp matures, it buds and the buds break off, flip over, and float away as medusas – the jellyfish shape we are most familiar with.
Mind blown, right?
If I hadn’t made the connection to Carl Linnaeus’ work that we had been reading about, and hadn’t been brave enough to ask the biologist questions, I wouldn’t have made this fascinating connection. I would have looked at the jellyfish, thought “Wow, so beautiful”, taken a picture, and that would have been that. But instead, real learning, the science of relations took over and I walked out of the aquarium that day with a deeper appreciation for the complexity of life on earth.
It’s never too late to get excited about learning – even if the learning is about jellyfish.
Kids Books for Aquarium Visits
I thought I’d also share some of our favourite kids books to inspire our aquarium visits!
Before heading to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we read Jellyfish by Valerie Boden. It gave us some knowledge of jellyfish that we could then think about as we observed them.
My Visit to the Aquarium by Aliki
Any visit to any aquarium would be complemented nicely by My Visit to the Aquarium by Aliki, but especially if you visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The author/illustrator modeled the illustrations from several aquariums and the Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of them! We brought it with us to the aquarium to compare the illustrations to the real thing.
What’s it Like to be a Fish? by Wendy Pfeffer
I love the Let’s Read and Find Out Science series. This is a great read that helps kids walk..or should I say swim…a mile in a fish’s scales.
Most visits to aquariums will include a school of fish, and Swimmy is a memorable character who encourages his school-mates to work together to stay safe from predators.
I hope this post gave you some plankton for thought! What has inspired you lately? What have you learned more about, just because it’s interesting?
Warmly,
-Heather
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