Blue Sky Days Blog: Summer Homeschooling

Meeting our favorite dinosaur, Blue, from Jurassic World

KAIJU WEEK -

Monday: Dinosaurs

History/Culture: How do we know dinosaurs were real? Because we have found fossils of their bones. However, historians believe that dinosaur bones have also lead people to come up with the idea for more fantastic creatures, such as dragons and kaiju
Roundtable Discussion: Why do you think people are so interested in dinosaurs?
Teach the Teacher: What would you like to teach the teacher about dinosaurs? You need a topic or particular dinosaur and a learning tool, such a book, a toy, an experiment, a video, an activity, a drawing, or a game
Science: What do you want to learn about dinosaurs? The kids asked -

How did they hunt? Small carnivores like velociraptors hunted similarly to wolves and lionesses, they hunted in packs and communicated as a team to take down larger prey; larger carnivores like T-Rex and Carnotaurus hunted alone or in a pair, as the prey was usually smaller than they were; then there were egg snatchers like the oviraptor that just took other dinosaurs' eggs
How did Brachiosaurus survive being so big? They ate A LOT; 800lbs of plant matter per day! Also, there was far more oxygen in the air back then, which allowed animals to grow much larger than they can these days
How did T-Rex get up when they fell down? They had a very strong tail that they could lean on to regain their center of gravity if they fell over. They could use this as essentially an arm to get back up if they fell.

P.E.: Dinosaur Exercise
Literature/Reading: "Sight Word Stomp" - gameplay is similar to a life-sized Candy Land; read the sight word to stomp to the next dinosaur footprint; whoever wins gets the prize (we did a few rounds, two kids with six footprints each round to a prize to open, ours were kaiju action figures to assist with Wednesday's activity); you can also do this once a day throughout the week to help with retaining sight words; you can use Google to find the sight words appropriate for your little one's grade level, and then use a marker or Sharpie to write on the footprints

Sight Word Stomp

Tuesday: Dragons

History/Culture: Did dragons exist? Were they friend or foe? Throughout the world, in almost all cultures, there are stories of dragons. Sometimes they are a beast to be slain that has a ravenous appetite, lives in a cave, and hoards treasure, and sometimes they are the companion or mount of a powerful leader. Historians think the stories come from finding bones of prehistoric dinosaurs and even more recent bones of animals like giraffes.
P.E.: Dragon Cave Chase
Art: Dragons can look like anything. What would your dragon look like?

Literature/Reading: Read the dragon section in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling
Media: Watch the Never Ending Story

Wednesday: Kaiju

P.E.: Godzilla vs Kong Chase
History/Culture: Kaiju is Japanese for "strange beast." The word originally referred to monsters and creatures from ancient Japanese legends, and the modern version came from paleontology and the idea that legendary creatures could still being alive. For example: a Ceratosaurs thought to still be alive in Alaska in 1905 was called a kaiju by the Japanese. Dinosaurs in movies destroying cities and engaging in military battle have also been called kaiju, even if they were based on real life dinosaurs that did exist in the past.

Rodan - colossal, prehistoric, irradiated species of Pteranodon
Mothra - she is based on a silk worm and is a hero of the kaiju world; has been depicted as a giant caterpillar, but is typically shown as a Giant Divine Moth; she has two fairies who speak on her behalf, and her goal is to protect her own island culture, the Earth, and Japan; she hatches offspring when approaching death
King Gidorah - "Gidorah" means hydra - which was a three-headed dragon-like monster; King Gidorah has no arms, two legs, wings in the shape of fans, and two tails. He has been described as 521 feet tall, weighing 141,056 tons, and with a speed of 550 knots. His heads (named Ichi, Ni, and San) can think independently - the middle is the leader, the right head is angry and thirsty for battle, and the left head is curious and slightly more docile. He has gravity beams, gains energy from eating his victims, can regenerate from severed body parts, can cause electrical storms and alter climate conditions, can cause hurricane force winds, feeds off power sources, generates magnetic fields, can create domes and power shields, can shoot lightening bolts from its wings, can hypnotize, can spit fireballs, can cause electric shock by biting its victims, can move between dimensions, can distort space and time, can change reality, and his mission is to kill everything and devour the planet

STEM: Make your own set and film your own Kaiju movie (I ordered the vinyl Bandai kaiju via Amazon, but you could also get the mini models, and you'll just have to scale down your city, etc.)

Thursday: Types of Kaiju - Godzilla World

Other Common Kaiju (if they have questions about the specs or abilities for any of the other ones)
Clover (he's only in the Cloverfield movies, but the kids love him)

Art: Design your own kaiju with traits that you think would make it strong. Do you think it would win against Godzilla?

Friday: Types of Kaiju - Pacific Rim World

Legions of kaiju rose from the ocean through the rim, and people used Jaegers to fight them
Pollution opened up the rim (the "breach") and let them out; the rim is on the floor of the Mariana Trench
Kaiju take nuclear missiles to destroy them
The fluid inside kaiju is ammonia-based and self-destructs immediately after death; releases a noxious agent into the air called "Kaiju Blue" and contaminates the air and immediate environment, rendering it inhabitable; jaegers cauterize the wounds they give kaiju to prevent the spread of the highly acidic internal fluids; the kaiju are led to the cities by the urban runoff; they have a hive mind system and can communicate with each other immediately, just like humans do when they drift together while in the jaeger
They have categories of kaiju - the Serizawa Scale measures the water displacement, toxicity, and ambient radiation levels given off when their bodies pass through the "breach"

Roundtable Discussion: Do you think Gypsy Danger could have taken down Godzilla? Do you think a jaeger could have matched any of your favorite kaiju?
History/Culture: Can you think of another movie that shows the rift? The rift/trench as shown in Aqua Man, going to the other dimension, the center of Earth (this video does have some spear action through kaiju by Aquaman, so be warned)

Saturday: Field Trip to a Dinosaur Museum; what kinds of different creatures could you make with the bones you see?

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