15 Mar Five in a Row: Night of the Moonjellies, Part 1

We have been on vacation in Florida for the past couple of  weeks with family.  We drove the 18 hours there and back but broke the trip on the way back by stay for a day in Destin.  For years I’d heard how beautiful the beaches of Destin were, and now I understand the hype!  It has the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen in the United States!

Even though it was pretty chilly, and the water downright cold, we couldn’t drag the kids away from the sand and beach.  We spent some of our time at a State Park, which had warnings posted of jellyfish, several of which we found washed up on shore.  What better time to start our Five in a Row study of the book Night of the Moonjellies?!

Book Review

A young boy named Mark works at his family’s food stand. One morning he finds a jellyfish on the beach and takes it to show his grandmother. They spend the day managing their food stand with the promise of a surprise at the end of the day. When the evening comes, Mark’s grandmother takes him out to sea in a boat where he gets a glimpse of pure wonder.

This is a beautiful book on several levels. The various aspects of the story are captivating to young and old The illustrations are bright and beautiful, and the whole concept inspires wonder. This is definitively a book that we will keep on our shelves to read again and again.

Our First Experience with Jellyfish

Clark and Luci were pretty excited to find jellyfish washing up along the beach. I’m not sure how you tell if they are alive or not, but there were never any signs of life from the poor jellyfish, despite the extensive efforts by Clark. He found one half-buried jellyfish in the sand and spent a long time trying to revive it with water – to no avail.

After giving up on the jellyfish, Clark was busy digging himself a hole to show us all how he had no feet, when he suddenly bolted out of the water-filled hole, screaming.  A jellyfish had washed ashore, right into his little hole and stung his toes!  Thankfully there was no lasting damage, the sting was gone within a minute or two, but it did spark an interest in jellyfish.

Narration

Our first attempt at narration did not go very well.  When I asked Clark to tell me what he remembered of the story he flopped on the couch and squealed, moaning that he did not want to.  Instead I asked him questions:  What was the boy’s name?  Can you tell me what was the story about?  What did the boy find?  Tell us what the boy did during the day?  What was the surprise?  He was able to answer most of the questions without any problems.  We will slowly work on narration, as it is a skill that needs to be developed.

Dollar Store Moonjellies

I was awoken this morning by two little children wanting to make Dollar Store glow sticks into moonjellies.  I was delighted with their creativity and went with it.  We made bracelets out of the glow sticks and then they decided that they needed tentacles.  It was Clark’s idea to make tentacles out of yarn, so here we are!  (And please note Clark’s terrible elbow injury – he was sure to show it!)

They cost practically nothing and they amused them all day long.  You can’t get better than that!

Geography

We read the book again and talked about where it took place.  We examined our map and learned where New England was.  We’ll need to review this later.  We also looked at where we live, where Grandma and Grandpa live, and where we went on vacation.  Clark and Luci were pretty excited to see that the moonjellies were found in the Atlantic Ocean where they had just swam a week ago! Making these connections is so helpful for the memory!

Writing

After their naps, I printed out a few things for them to work on.  I gave Luci a paper with the letter O (for Ocean) to stamp and color.  She immediately recognized it as an O, exclaiming “That’s an O!”  I had some more advanced stuff for Clark to do, but he really wanted to do the O, too.  He absolutely hates writing, so I’m going to have to find a way to make him excited about it.

Next, Clark worked on identifying the first letter of each word for each item pictured.  He was then supposed to trace the word.  Identifying the word was far too easy for him and he had no interest in writing anything.  He was, again, more interested in what Luci was doing.  I gave her a couple more Os to stamp, giving her more specific instructions to stay within the lines.  She did much better.

We finished by coloring a bunch of fish and coral for an aquatic biome we will be creating.  While they colored, I read to them and discussed facts about jellyfish.  They seemed to retain all of the information very well, as we discussed it again at dinner and Clark was able to tell much of what was discussed.

Don’t miss our entire Five in a Row: Night of the Moonjellies study! Here’s Part 2, Part3, and Part 4.