Kraken (Or How One Person's Blog Post Can Spark a Unit Study)

I really like to read Almost Unschoolers blog. She has numerous great ideas for painless learning, and she often includes things that have math skills built in. But she really surpassed her own great ideas when she posted about giant squid.

Because of that one blog post, my family has undertaken a (secret) unit study this summer. We don't "do school" in the summer, but this idea has sparked my kids' imaginations, so we have run with it.

The first thing we did was to get the book Here There Be Monsters from the library.
  
We are reading this book as a family. We have all enjoyed this book immensely. There are the coolest pictures of kraken in the book, and there is a great history of the legends of kraken, how the name came to be, and how they eventually discovered that the legends were based on truth and after long effort, photographed some of these monsters.

Because of this, we decided that we would rent 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea from Amazon.
Totally awesome movie! Have I seen it before, because after watching it, I don't think I have. All my kids, my husband and I loved this movie. Action packed, and yet clean and appropriate for the entire family, it was a wonderful movie night at our house.

Then, my son decided that he had to have Zoob, in order to make a giant squid to fight his Lego men. This is something Almost Unschoolers mentions in her post, and my son was keen to try it for himself.
He spent his own money and bought a set, which he is enjoying immensely.


The final thing we have done so far is to make a squid pizza. It was amazingly successful, and fun.
Here's the pictures.

Kraken pizza

Another view of Kraken pizza

My older two kids being silly with the Kraken "legs" we made.

Now all the kids want me to make them their very own Kraken crochet animal like the one in Almost Unschoolers's Post.

Kraken in the Almost Unschoolers' post. 

**Theoretically, I could receive compensation for the affiliate links. I have never gotten enough click throughs to get any money from Amazon, but I guess it could happen.**

In conclusion, I would like to offer a *big thank you* to Almost Unschoolers for starting us down a really enjoyable (and spontaneous) unit study.