Picture Book Buds are a fun and easy way to incorporate literacy into nature study. Read a book (you can even read it outside!) and then enjoy the related activity and snack suggestions!
Chomp! The Truth About Sharks
Written by: Annette Whipple
Chomp! The Truth About Sharks is a fun new nonfiction book about sharks. Having just spent some time hunting for fossil shark teeth this summer, my boys were all over it! It does a great job of breaking down all the info about sharks in a nice concise way: where they live, how they work, the parts of the body, different adaptations, and of course some blood and teeth. It’s also peppered with fun unusual facts (called shark bites!) I definitely learned some cool shark factoids to impress all the kids– ha! This is a great book for shark fans, ocean study, shark week or a trip to the ocean. It’s also a great accompaniment to fossil shark tooth hunting if you happen to be lucky enough to visit a place with fossils! (Yes that is my megalodon tooth in the photo… and yes, I am ridiculously proud of it.)
Shark Tooth Necklace
If you have a shark tooth, you obviously want to show it off Maui-style right? Use this quick, simple technique to wrap teeth for necklaces, and if you don’t have any teeth or fossils at home, print out the ones below and use them instead! (You can read more about the difference between a fossil and regular tooth in the “Fact or Fiction” section of the book!)
Materials:
- shark teeth or printable (below)
- cardboard (only for the printed version)
- scissors (only for the printed version)
- glue stick (only for the printed version)
- string or twine
Method:
If you are using a real tooth skip to the next section. If you are using the printable start here:
Download and print out the fossil shark tooth printable. Cut out your favorite tooth (or teeth!) with scissors.
Use the glue stick to attach the cut out tooth smoothly down onto cardboard and allow to dry. Cut out the tooth again (with the cardboard now.)
This is now your tooth for the next steps!
To tie the necklace:
First, cut a length of string long enough to be a longish necklace plus a little extra. Then, lay the string down on the table like an upside down U. Place the tooth, pointing down, on top of the loop.
Next, thread both tails through the loop (the top of the upside down U) and pull them taut.
Now, make a knot on each side keeping the loops around the tooth as tight as you can. This is a little fiddly so take your time and pull it tight again if it comes loose.
Last, tie both sides together right against the tooth. This will pull everything tighter, as well. Make a knot at the top of the tails to close the necklace and rock your new necklace!
Glowing Megamouth Shark Cookies
Ok, so it’s actually a whale shark cookie cutter and I kind of merged the two sharks in cookie form… but I was very intrigued by an aside in the “Where do Sharks Live?” section of the book: megamouth sharks reflect the light of bioluminescent plankton in their mouths to attract prey. Cool right? The obvious next step was to make a shark cookie with a glowing mouth of course! You can use any cutout cookie dough you like for the base of these cookies.
Ingredients:
- your favorite cutout cookie recipe
- shark cookie cutter (here is my whale shark although there are some cool 3D printed ones now too)
- royal icing
- 1 100 mg vitamin B2 tablet
- 1/4 cup water
- small food safe paintbrush
- blacklight
Method:
Cut out and bake your cookies according to the recipe’s directions.
Once they have cooled, use the royal icing to decorate your cookies. Make sure you pipe some icing everywhere you want there to be to a glow. (It shows up better on a white background) Allow to dry completely.
Crush the B2 tablet into a powder and mix it with the water. This makes far more than you really need, but it’s one tablet’s worth. Using a food safe paintbrush, paint some of the B2 solution on any of the icing you want to glow. Dry.
Shine a blacklight on your cookies and watch those mouths glow!
NOTE: Alternatively, you could make your icing with the B2 water if you wanted everything to glow.
