Description

Download the requirements for the whale award by clicking on the download link above.

Level: Sunbeam (2nd grade)
Category: Nature
Section: My World

Whale

1. Pick one whale to study.
2. Is a whale a mammal or a fish?
3. What is the size of the whale when full grown?
4. Draw full size whale in a parking lot with sidewalk chalk.
5. Learn five facts about your whale, such as suggested below:

1. What it eats
2. Where it lives or migrates
3. How it interacts with other whales
4. How long it lives
5. How many babies it has and how are they born
6. Listen to whale sounds

6. In damp sand or clay sculpt your whale.
7. Read or listen to the story of Jonah and act out the story.

Helps
1. Search the library or Internet for information on the whales.
2. Whales, porpoises, and dolphins are the only mammals that live entirely independent of land. Like land mammals, they are warmblooded vertebrate animals that have hair and breathe air. The baby whale develops in the mother and after birth, the mother cares for it and feeds it milk.
3. When a blue whale is born its coat of blubber is 1 inch (2 1/2 cm) thick. It gains seven pounds (3 1/4 Kg) a day and the blubber is one foot (30 1/2 cm) thick and the whale weighs 30 tons (27,279 Kg) when full grown. It is the largest living animal and may be as much as 90 feet (27 meters) long and weigh 110 tons (100,000 Kg) or more. Its flippers can be 10 feet (3 meters) long and it flukes 15 feet (4 1/2 meters) from tip to tip. The heart is the size of a Volkswagen and a human could crawl through the aorta. The tongue is as heavy as an elephant.
4. Place a few marks (dot-to-dot concept) as guides for drawing the actual outline of a whale or draw just a straight line to show the length of the whale.
5. The blue whale is called the moustache whale because it uses the baleen inside its mouth to strain the water out and to keep plankton and small fish inside. The blue whale swims at 15 miles per hour (30 Kph) and migrates throughout the year to find food. It eats up to two tons (1800 Kg) of food a day and may live to be 60 years old. Blue whales give birth once every two years. All whales are very social. They travel in schools and love to play with each other.

Resources
omplace.com/omsites/discover/index.html (Whale migration routes)
enchantedlearning.com (pictures to color, anatomy drawings and information sheets—
wonderful source for any subject)
seaworld.org/infobooks (Whale information and a few children activities)
acsonline.org/factpack (1-2 page overview of each whale)