Tybee Island

I just thought this was plain cute. There were little turtle statues all over the island. It was cute. I don't believe I got a picture of them though.

Tybee beach

Colin having a blast with some minnows and small clams.

Conner trying to get the hang of the boogie board. He had a really good time with it. He ventured some into trying to surf along the incoming waves ,I forgot what it was called, and he never did get the hang of it although he probably would have given just a few more days at the beach.

Austin comes in for a bit of suntanning. He tried the surfing too and fell and his back hurt for a few days. But he did try again after that.

What a great little place to find. It was either this beach community or Myrtle beach. I found all those tall skyscraper type hotels on Myrtle beach a bit "not what I have in mind for a beach". Then I happened upon this little community. It was just great. They don't have a wal-mart and we only saw one fast food joint. I think they are trying to preserve the island and not have it as commercialized. I loved that. There were still a million people there during the weekend we went but the beach is just so big that there is so much room.

The boys immediately head out into the water coming in only when we call them. Although Austin did come in once or twice to lay out in the sun-not that he needed it. I tried to talk them into building a sand castle but after being left to do it on my own it was just not as much fun. They tried boogie boarding and surfing along the incoming tide very close to the beach. It was quite hard and although they got much better at it they still didn't quite get it. I'm sure if we had spent just another week at the beach(alone) then they would have it down.

We walked along the beach and had sort of a school session, not really but now come to think of it yes it was. We talked about the tide going out and how far it had gone that it revealed a sandbar. How the sandbar had all these ripples and how the ocean current had formed them. We walked out quite a ways and lucked out and found several animals. We found a urchin(dead unfortunately) a sand dollar (dead also, fortunately for Austin who kept it). Chris showed them how to find sea snails which they did for about 45 min, I still can't believe they kept interest in that so long. Chris also showed them something else. Have you ever seen those holes in the beach close to the water and sometimes they sort of bubble???I never thought about it but apparently there are small little clams in there. So the boys dig and dig, they get quite good, and find the clams. Then Chris shows them something else that had me just dumbstruck. It was sooooo cool- I am such a big kid. If you put these little clams, no bigger then say your finger nail, you put them on the wet sand sort of sitting up and wait. It is the most bizarre thing. After a bit the little clam starts to shake and ,here is the craziest part, it shakes and that creates a hole and it disappears into the sand. How cool is that. Please stop laughing at me, okay it does sound ridiculous that I could be so astounded at such a simple thing and here my hubby says I'm expensive. The boys and I had the best time finding these clams, poor clams, and digging them up so we could see them dig/shake/rattle and roll(lol) their way back into the sand. This honestly kept us occupied for over an hour.

At one point we do head to the Marine Science Center. They have hands on exhibits. They do alot with the Loggerhead Turtles that nest there.The kids get to hold all sorts of neat stuff and they love it. They hold a sea star, sand dollar, horseshoe crab, hermit crab, sea snail among other things. They get to see several different turtles and what was once made with them back when it was still legal to kill them. The Center isn't all that big and it's right in front of the pier at the beach. But it is such an important resource. It helps find the nest of the loggerhead turtles and protects them. There are no lights allowed on the beach past 9 at night so the females coming on shore to lay their eggs will not be scared away.

We did walk down the pier and it was cool. People fish from there although it seems the fish aren't biting. The pier has several different concession stands and is really cute. The beach has lifeguards , which we assumed were paid by the community which was in turn getting that money from the revenue of the parking. It was $3 for I think 4 hours but hey I don't mind when I see life guards and good streets and a quaint community.

So many ideas came to from just going to the beach. WE could study any of the numerous animals/marine life we found and saw. We could look at the beach and its ecosystem or the tides and temperatures and such. What about the lighthouses?? that would be fun as well.

Beach

http://www.tybeemarinescience.org/

Tybee Marine science center

http://www.wetlandsinstitute.org/education/teacher/Beach_Exploration.pdf

Lesson plan for the beach

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/SEAGRANT/bmpm/coastal_ecosystems.html

Lesson plans based from hawaii beach, looks like upper level

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/14/g68/beachshark.html

National geographic lesson plan for going to the beach, shark related

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/Ocean/

A to Z Ocean theme lesson plans. there are several different ones here at a few different levels encompasing all sorts of things ocean related.

http://www.teachingheart.net/beachteach.html

A fantastic resource for beach related things. Very well put together. The time it took I can only imagine.

http://search.enchantedlearning.com/cgi-bin/uncgi/search?key=beach

Enchanted learning- great stuff find what you want. I love this site.

http://www.learningtogive.org/lessons/unit85/lesson1.html

Why we should clean the beach lesson plan, real cute has some virtues we can teach to our children

Loggerhead turtles

http://www.kiawahturtles.com/Loggerhead%20Facts/Lifecycle.htm

A bit about loggerhead turtles

http://www.dnr.sc.gov/seaturtle/

Great info and links about loggerhead turtles and other turtles as well. There is a wealth of info here.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/turtle/Seaturtlecoloring.shtml

Enchanted learning label of a sea turtle

http://savannahnow.com/node/361547

Scroll down and click on the interactive video, it has terms and it is very neat

Dolphins

http://homeschooling.about.com/od/unitssubjsci/p/sealesson6.htm

A whole lesson plan made by Beverly Hernandez. It's got really good stuff here

http://teacher.scholastic.com/dolphin/weblinks.htm

Some really great links to discover about dolphins and whales

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/themes/dolphins.shtml

Enchanted learning dolphin stuff

I could go on and on but I'm sure you would be bored stiff, that is if you are still here. Anyway there is all sorts of great information out there. If you have found some outstanding stuff relating to anything here please let me know in the comments section and I will take a look.

Vanessa