sharks!

Aaron became slightly obsessed with sharks after watching the movie Soul Surfer one day(very good movie by the way).  He was asking tons of questions, and then afterwards he kept asking more.  So, we decided to jump into a little shark unit study.  I found a great lapbook on homeschool share all about sharks, and we dug out some of our shark books (which thankfully we already had).  We were surprised to come across the story of Bethany (same girl from the movie soul surfer) in one of the books.  It was fun to see that, and of course Aaron wanted me to read that page to him several times.
We managed to squeeze in one little shark craft. A toilet paper tube shark.  Here's Aric painting his.  He's my little craft boy.
Here's the finished product hanging in our dining room.
We came across this book, Shark Wars by EJ Altbacker, at Costco, so we picked it up for a read aloud.  Aaron has liked it so far.  We are only about 4 chapters into it.  Read alouds go pretty slow with him, but he asks to read it pretty often.  It has a few shark facts interwoven into the story so that has been helpful too.
 

Here is the finished lapbook.  We used that Usborne book about Sharks for most of it.  I sure love Usborne books!  It was very helpful.  This lapbook covered a lot of shark information.  I did some of the filling in, and Aaron did some with me.  We did Shark safety together, and we thought it was interesting that one rule listed for shark safety was not to pull on a sharks tail.  Apparently some divers like to do that, and sharks don't like that.  You think? 

The other side of the lapbook.  I also printed up a shark coloring book (on the left).  It has some facts and pictures of sharks to color.  Aaron didn't have much interest in coloring though.
I think Aaron learned a lot, and his fears have been lessened a little.  He thinks that sharks are pretty cool actually, but I don't think he's ready to come face to face with one yet.   

Desiree