Manatee Moments

We were gifted a subscription to Your Big Backyard magazine, and my kids adore it every month. Not only is it something fun to look forward to in the mail, but it spurs spontaneous adventure when we turn any topic of their choice into a unit study for the day. The feature in our recent issue was the Manatee. We read up what the magazine had to say, drew a picture of a Manatee with YBB's step-by-step instructions, and found amazing free education resources online at the Save the Manatee Club website. They have free printables, games, videos and sound clips you can hear a lot of the different sounds a Manatee makes! My kids loved it, very cool! We also made a diorama: the Manatee's Habitat in the ocean, complete with real rocks, since manatees love to scratch their backs by rolling around on the ocean floor. We had all the materials on hand already, and used a potato as our new pet manatee! It was a really fun study for the day.

Wildlife Rescue

A licensed DNR wildlife rehabilitation specialist attended our homeschool co-op last week as a guest speaker and the kids all had a wonderful time. They learned about rescuing animals in the wild, what to do and what not to do, and they even got to see and pet a live opossum. "Nubby" didn't have a tail, so she can't be released back into the wild, which taught the kids (and a lot of us adults) about how vital a opossum's tail truly is--aside from hanging by it, the opossum's tail gives it balance and is a fat store for the animal in the winter. It's a marsupial, of course, and the kids delighted in seeing and feeling her pouch.

Here's the website for the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council. And for kids, check out the Wildlife Rescue League Kids Page, it's great!!