Eastern Hemisphere: Hawaii

Honu the Green Sea Turtle
A draw and write turtle page which is perfect! Sea Turtle printable
Sea turtle art project that uses plastic wrap for the water effect. Very fun!
A quick and easy "How to draw a sea turtle" link

Old play dough is packed around
a water bottle.

Volcano
Book: Two Tales of Hawaii explores the scientific explanation for the islands' formation, as well as, the Hawaiian story of the goddess, Pele.

Dirt is added for an authentic look.

Great pages to print out for labeling, puzzles, and report pages decorated with volcanoes: abc teach

Discovery Kids has a wonderful interactive site for exploring volcanoes and you can even set one to explode and see the repercussions.

Olivia carefully adds the baking soda to the vinegar and food coloring.

A spectacular eruption!

Fun for all ages!

Movie: Volcano by DK Eyewitness is educational and fun without the fear mongering that happens in some documentaries. We watched one on tsunamis that had my children convinced that Hawaii and my sister had all been wiped out!


Fr. Damien of Molokai
We tried watching Molokai: The Story of Father Damien with just the older children, but it was too intense. The beginning, at least, gave them a better understanding of his challenges to minister to a leper colony. However, this is definitely an intense and melancholy movie. I would stick with the book, Father Damien and the Bells.

On a happy note, this little wooden peg worked out perfectly for Fr. Damien. I think he is supposed to be a construction worker. The plan is to paint a saint for each country that we visit.

Also, Sonlight has the children compose a definition essay on courage during the second week. This is a perfect opportunity to have them write about Fr. Damien. We added images found on the Internet to the end of the essay.


Hula
The movie, American Aloha was adequate. What was more fun was to search for the Merrie Monarch hula competition videos on Youtube. My little girls ended up dancing for us, in costume, over the next few days.

Art project: Hawaiian dancers was also a big hit. The best part of directed art is watching little ones take what they have learned and apply it to original creations.

Nene the Hawaiian Goose
Tales of Tutu Nene and Nele is a wealth of information in story form. The little girls remembered an impressive number of bird facts from this book alone.

Tall Ships Festival
If you can swing a visit to a ship festival after reading Seabird, it will be a perfect complement to your studies. This one was pure serendipity for us. Oh, how I love serendipitous schooling.

A final note: If your children can rack their brains hard enough to come up with Lilo and Stitch as an appropraite movie for your Hawaiian themed schooling, I say let them watch it. :-)