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Overview: Children use paper fish patterns to make their own "fishsticks," group themselves into schools, and "swim" to avoid make-believe predators. The activity is combined with the book Swimmy, by Leo Lionni, in which one little fish devises a plan to camouflage himself and his companions from prowling tuna.
Booklink: Swimmy, by Leo Lionni, A Dragonfly Book, 1963. ISBN 0-394-82620-5
Science Activity Link: Children construct lanternfish fishsticks from paper and soda straws. They observe the lanternfish characteristics (biolumenescent spots), classify themselves into groups with the same characteristics, and move in make-believe schools.
Objective: Children will observe and classify fish models, infer the adaptive value of schooling, and recognize and describe organisms that live in the sea.
Science Processes and Content: Processes-observing, classifying, communicating, inferring, and model building. Content-characteristics of organisms, habitats, biolumenescence, predator-prey relationships and food chains, adaptive behaviors, and diversity of sea life.
National Science Education Standards: Unifying concepts and processes, (1) Science as Inquiry, (3) Life Science
Materials: Swimmy, lanternfish patterns (4 different species), soda straws, scissors, clear tape
Procedure:
1. Provide each child with a fish pattern (2 sides) and have them cut it out. Since there are 4 fish patterns, make sure that each child has one pattern and that all 4 patterns are represented in the class.
2. Tape one of the fish sides to the end of the soda straw, then tape the other side on to complete the fish.
3. Gather all the children together in a large group in a space where they can move around. An open area of the classroom, a hallway, or outdoors works fine.
4. Challenge children to find other "fish" that look like their fish and join them in a smaller group. (Children group themselves with other fish that have the same biolumenscent spots.)
5. Explain that each group is a school of fish that live, eat, and swim together.
6. Now have the children join together into one big school holding their fishsticks high, always in the direction they are moving, and move all together, using "baby steps," in the direction of your commands-forward, right, left, to the rear.
7. Select several children to be tuna (predators) to tag fish that stray from the school as it moves. Explain the predator-prey relationship.
8. At the conclusion of the activity, read Swimmy and discuss the diversity of sea life, energy flow in a food chain, and the adaptive advantages of schooling behavior (protection from predators and ease in finding food and a mate.
Related Books:
What's It Like to Be a Fish? by Wendy Pfeffer, Harper Collins Publishing, 1996. ISBN 0-06-445151-8
Wonders of the Sea by Louis Sabin, Troll Associates, 1982. ISBN 0-89375-579-6
Creatures that Glow by Melvin Berger, Scholastic, 1996. ISBN 0-590-58108-2
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