Ocean Boxes

This  past year we studied Zoology using Apologia's Swimming Creatures Book.  One of the project recommendations is to make an Ocean Box, progressively adding creatures to it as you learn about them.  Here is a visual of the project for those who need some inspiration:

We started our box in September with our homeschool co-op.  The teacher brought in the blue paper.  Here it has some dangling fish that we had around the house, and the big yellow thing is a submersible, part of a play set that The Little Princess has.  The play set actually came with several of the marine animals that we needed, so we were inspired to use them all.  Thus, the boat you see on top of the box below.

Well, the boat threw off the proportions of the whole thing, so in April we went with a bigger box.  Here's what we ended up with:

 For sand on the ocean floor, we

 made some salt dough and just spread it around.  We also put some on top to symbolize beach, where a seal was playing (we cut out the seal from a box of animal crackers).  We put black construction paper on one corner of the box to make the midnight zone of the ocean, where we hung our angler fish.  The whale was made from a small plastic flower pot (an idea I mooched from an Oriental Trading kit).  We had some seashells to put into the sand, but The Girl also made one of modelling clay and out a pearl bead inside.  Some other additions:  fun foam sea animals from Little Princess, stuck to the back and sides, and a plastic wrap jellyfish.   There are a modelling clay-and-toothpick Cnidarian (look it up; I can't remember!), some sand dollars, an eel, and some turtles.  In addition, we had some collectible cards from our trip to Sea World in January and from National Geographic Kids that we cut out and stuck to the sides and back so that they popped out.  On the top, next to the boat, an orca is leaping out of the water.  The boat anchor goes through the box and dangles in the scene.  The boat came with scuba divers, the submersible, a nautilus, giant crab, anglerfish and I think some other fish that we hung up with sticky tack.

Final Project the night of our Knowledge Fair.  

One thing I didn't get to do but wanted to was to add ocean sounds.  Hubby has a tiny speaker that we have used with other presentations, and we were going to put it inside the boat with ocean sounds like dolphin calls, waves, etc, playing from an mp3 player.  I had some technical difficulties with this on the day of the Knowledge Fair, so it didn't happen.

Aside from that, though, I am really happy with how the box turned out and glad that we included this project as we went along.  Most of all, I found that these two kids worked together on it remarkably well.  If you know them well, you know that is saying something!  This is our third Apologia Elementary Science course that they have worked on together, and they are finally getting the hang of cooperation!  Next year, The Girl will be in Middle School science and The Mayor will have to use his cooperation skills on the Little Princess.