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This For Creative Minds educational section contains activities to engage children in learning while making it fun at the same time. The activitiesbuild on the underlying subjects introduced in the story. While older children may be able to do these activities on their own, we encourage adults to work with the young children in their lives. Even if the adults have long forgotten or never learned this information, they can still workthrough the activities and be experts in their children’s eyes! Exposure to these concepts at a young age helps to build a strong foundation for easier comprehension later in life. This section may be photocopied or printed from our website by the owner of this book for educational, non- commercial uses. Cross-curricular teaching activities for use at home or in the classroom, interactive quizzes, and more are available online. Goto www.ArbordalePublishing.com and click on the book’s cover to explore all the links.
For Creative Minds
A Venn diagram is made of overlapping circles and shows how two things are alike and different. In the Venn diagram below, one circle shows traits belonging to fish and the other shows traits belonging to mammals. In the middle, where the circles overlap, are traits that fish and mammals have in common.
Venn Diagram: Fish and Mammals
Fish Mammals
- are animals
- have a backbone
- need oxygen
- create new animals like itself (reproduce)
- are cold-blooded
- live in water
- breathe with gills
- lay eggs or give birth to live young
- are warm-blooded
- have skin with hair
- breathe with lungs
- gives birth to live young
Draw your own Venn diagram (or print the one in the online Teaching Activity Guide) to compare sharks and dolphins.
O
C
E
A
N
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A predator is any animal that hunts other animals (prey) for food. Predators are an important part of any food web. If the top predators disappear from a food web, it affects the entire ecosystem. What could happen if sharks and dolphins were not a part of the ocean food web? Put the following events in order to spell the scrambled word.
A World Without Sharks and Dolphins
Sharks and dolphins hunt mid-size ocean animals, including squid, seals, stingrays, and large fish. If sharks or dolphins disappeared, these mid-size ocean animals would have fewer predators. Their populations would grow.
Answer: OCEANS
All of those mid-size ocean animals would need lots of food to eat. They would over-hunt the smaller marine life that feeds on algae, jellyfish, and plankton. The small-size ocean animals would start to disappear.
Without as many small fish and algae-eaters, there would be nothing to slow the growth of algae. Algae are important to the ocean’s health, but too much algae can smother coral reefs.
The coral reefs smothered by algae would get sick and die. Coral reefs are an important ocean habitat. They provide shelter and food for many ocean animals. If the coral reefs died, those animals would disappear as well.
If the coral reefs and the animals they support disappeared, human fishers all around the world would not be able to catch as many fish.
If the fishers could not catch enough fish, many people would go hungry. Three billion people (almost half of the world’s population) depend on seafood as part of their diet.
D F
A (^) C
B
E
Match the body part labels to their location on the dolphin. Answers are below. Rostrum: the part of a dolphin’s face that sticks forward from the body Blowhole: opening on a dolphin’s back that allow the dolphin to take in oxygen from the air Dorsal fin: the fin on a dolphin’s back, used to stabilize the body in the water Eye: the organ on the front of the face that a dolphin uses to see Flukes: the horizontal tail at the back of a dolphin’s body Pectoral fins: the fins at a dolphin’s sides
Dolphins
Dolphins use echolocation to map their surroundings. They rely heavily on their sense of sound. Dolphins make a high-pitched squeaking noise and then listen for the echoes. Sound moves in waves. When it hits an object, it bounces back. This is called an echo. The sound of the echo tells the dolphin what type of thing the sound bounced off. The time it takes for the echo to come back to the dolphin’s ear tells it how far away the object is. Dolphins use their sense of hearing to find their prey.
Answers: A-rostrum. B-eye. C-blowhole. D-pectoral fins. E-dorsal fin. F-flukes
Look at the shark body parts on the previous page. What body parts do sharks and dolphins have in common? What body parts are similar but have different names? What body parts do sharks have that dolphins don’t, or vice versa?
