Octopuses!

Recently, a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook of an Octopus that heaved itself up onto the rocky beach, walked around, regurgitated a LARGE crab, and then casually walked backed into the ocean.  Monkey watched the video with me, and then asked to find more videos about Octopuses.  So we started on youTube looking for videos, and found some amazing ones!  I decided that since Thursday is December 1st, we have 3 days that we can study Octopuses before we start our Christmas activities.

NOTE:  The plural of Octopus seems to be really controversial!  I looked in up on many websites!  Seems like people use Octopuses, Octopusses, Octopi, octopods, octopoids, octopodes, octopussies etc etc etc!  So I'm going with Octopuses!

Here is the video we originally saw. Especially pay attention at 2:07 of the video

We ended up watching youTube videos for close to an hour after seeing this one.  I started reading him amazing stories about how Octopuses had escaped in Aquariums/Zoos to go to other tanks, eat the marine life in those tanks, and then go back to their own tanks as if nothing ever happened.  We came across this interesting video of an Octopus that was actually eating sharks at the Seatle Aquarium in USA.

So I did some research and found lots of Octopus activities to cover over the next few days!  First, I printed quite a few colouring pages, so we could colour them in different colours since Octopuses are the masters of camouflage.  We talked about how they have 8 tenticles and they had no bones like us.

We got some good colourings from here and from here

Here are SOME of the pages we used.

Here Monkey is working on colouring inside the lines, something we are making a little bit of progress on.

Since we learned that Octopuses can change colours depending on what is around them, Monkey decided to colour each tenticle a different colour, well almost each tenticle :)

This Octopus picture conveniently had a turtle on it, so I had to use it!

After we coloured all the pages, Monkey decided he wanted to trace his hand.  So we traced his hand and then he pointed out that it looked like an Octopus!  So we turned it upside down and drew a face on it.  This one I helped him with the eyes and mouth and tracing his hand...

But this one he did completely alone!  (Hence the face is upside down)

We decided this Octopus was the best camouflaged one, since he could hide almost anywhere with colours!

Octopuses can be really great teaching tools.  We learned about ocean animals, counting to 8 (tenticles), the letter O, colours and camouflage,  that sometimes creatures can do things they aren't supposed to (walking on land) and we learned that animals are smarter than we give them credit for.  Stay tuned for tomorrows Octopus crafts!