We finished up the chapter on whales and dolphins, but I didn’t think they were quite grasping how big these animals were. If I read to you a whale is 100 feet long would you know how long that is? So we started to investigate, how big is a whale? This made for a great science lesson and was such a fun addition to our Swimming Creatures Unit.
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I lied, I did not end up putting in any affiliate links, because it just wasn’t worth the trouble.
How big is a whale?
First, we measured the kids to get a baseline of how far a distance is.
We also tried to measure Mac, but he wasn’t so cooperative.
Then we measured out the different whales and dolphins using 10-foot measurements with our tape. This picture is the length of a Killer Whale, 30 feet (look at the picture up above in the collage).
The kids were fairly impressed, but then we measured the Sperm Whale.
That is a distance of 110 feet. The kids were very impressed that I was almost all the way across the street to be that far away.
I did this for about 8 different whales and dolphins, but you get the idea, and some of these just aren’t as impressive. I mean, being 8 feet away when you take a picture is just a normal picture.
But, they do now remember, how big is a whale? Answer: Very big.
More swimming creatures lessons
- Ocean animals preschool craft book
- How to age bivalves
- Why do octopus change colors?
- horeshoe crabs
- Florida ocean layers science lesson
* photo by Tony Hisgett, used as part of creative commons
Originally published August 21, 2011
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