Shrimp Nature Study

Hi! Future Ticia 2024 here, I’m updating this post and realized I have two different shrimp nature studies on my blog. The first shrimp nature study was from a grocery store visit, and the second that this post started out as came from a serendipitious discovery at a sushi restaurant. So I’m combining the two science lessons into one post and create one great nature study (which apparently still needs a landing page) that was a great review of Swimming creatures a few years after we’d finished studying them.

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Background information for our shrimp nature study

When we studied Swimming Creatures we used Apologia Swimming Creatures (surprise!). But if you’re not studying an entire year of swimming creatures and just want to study shrimp because you’re kids are interested or maybe you’re starting an ocean animals unit, here are some others books you could pick up:

• Shrimp– This is a longer book, so I’d use this with 1st grade and older
• Dissect dim sum– I like this for kids to see how we use shrimp and it could possibly let you include this in a geography unit and maybe follow up by finding a dim sum restaurant.

My library didn’t have a lot of books, so I’m also going to link to a few videos.

And then one more.

Start your shrimp nature study at the grocery store

I return you to past Ticia 2012:

I’m kinda thinking I need a “grocery science” category, because as I was finishing up our science experiment for the week I realized a large majority of our science experiments come from there.

Case in point.  This week we were reading about different crustaceans, and I thought excellent let’s check out the lobsters at the store.

We had a lot of fun observing the different parts and remembering why the water is cold (keeps the lobsters complacent and from needing to eat).

I asked if we could touch the lobsters, but they’re not allowed to touch except with gloves on, and I was rather expecting that answer, but figured I’d give it a shot.

Shrimp nature study observations

That night after dinner we explored the 6 shrimp I got after looking at the lobsters.  I considered getting some crab too (what a great excuse to get crab, right?), but the crab is already cut in half and doesn’t have the exoskeleton on it.  Kinda takes away some of the science lesson, and thus my excuse to get crab.

We went through and looked at their swimmerets, and discussed their exoskeleton, which is tough and brittle.  Then we looked at the tail, talked about it for awhile.

Jeff joined in the lesson at this point, and after having pulled the tail off one, pointed out the long thin brown thing you can see in the picture (thank goodness for zoom).  That is the shrimp’s lower intestine.  Then we talked about how the butcher (or someone else) had already taken the head off and removed most of the organs.

Let me tell you that was the most fascinating thing EVER to them.

Afterwards they filled out the lapbook portion about shrimp and drew pictures.  Oh, and they all stole Jeff’s shrimp.  Back when we were on our Christmas trip they all tried shrimp and swore they didn’t like it.  On Wednesday when I only got a little they all decided they loved it and stole all of poor Jeff’s shrimp.

Future Ticia 2024 would just have them write in either the Apologia Swimming Creatures Notebook. I’ll admit when they were this age I wasn’t sold on them and then my friend got them and I was sold.

OR.

At some point, I start using a composition notebook for all of their nature study.

That was a wildly popular nature study.

More Nature Studies

Over the years we’ve done other nature studies.

• How to make a nature scavenger hunt
• Quick nature walk tips
• Shell nature study
• Where is the baby plant in the peanut?
• Zoo animal observation form

Accidental Shrimp Nature Study at a Sushi Restaurant

A few months ago I shared how we dissected a shrimp, however the shrimp we got from our grocery store was already beheaded.  We got ones with shells on, so they saw the tails and legs and such stuff, but they really wanted to know what the head looked like, up close and personal.

I joked about going out for sushi and making my brother order fried shrimp heads again (he did it on a dare once, it was AWESOME), but Jeff didn’t think that was the best plan, for many perfectly valid reasons.

Then, when we were in Virginia we ate at this perfectly horrible Chinese/Japanese buffet.

Horrible, they messed up jello so badly I couldn’t eat it.

But, they had shrimp with their heads on.  So, right there in the restaurant we had a science lesson.

First thing we noticed is how HUGE the eyes are.  I personally think they’re kind of freaky.

Next we noticed the length of the antennae.  They’re about as long as the shrimp itself.

This required a lot of playing and fiddling around to see how much it could be moved.

And then some general exploration of how it moves and the different parts of it.

Of course eventually it was eaten.

I guess that day we played with our food.