TOS Review ~ DIVE Into Your Imagination!

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We just returned from a vacation to the beach! While we were on a ferry heading over to Fort Sumter, Ben spotted a family of dolphins in the water. He was so excited! He loves the ocean and all it has to offer in the way of fun activities and science.

I was so thrilled that before we left, we were sent the DVD, Who Lives in the Sea?, from Dive Into Your Imagination, for review. We also received two copies of The Educator Guide to Who Lives in the Sea, one for PreK-K and one for grades 1-3, to use as well.

Ben regaled everyone within earshot on the ferry of everything he knew about dolphins, mostly from what he had learned from Who Lives in the Sea!

“We want you to love our ocean, because
we protect what we love.”
~Ocean Annie

This DVD is one of 3 offered by impassioned scuba diver, author, producer, underwater photographer, and motivational speaker, Annie Crawley, AKA Ocean Annie. Annie’s mission is to help you fall in love with the ocean, so you will be inspired to protect it. The other DVDs offered include, What Makes a Fish a Fish? and Dive Into Diversity.

The first time we watched the DVD, we were drawn in by Annie’s obvious love for the ocean, and the amazing cinematography. As you watch, she narrates what you’re seeing, giving simple explanations and observations. It’s clear that she is speaking to younger children, but we were so mesmerized by what we were seeing, we hardly noticed that at all. And there is the option to just listen to soothing music while you watch, if you’d rather not listen to the narration. There’s no way for me to say in words how gorgeous the underwater footage is, so take a peak at this clip to see for yourself:

While the DVD alone is absolutely beautiful and will teach your students amazing things about life under and around the sea, the DVD and The Educator Guide together work in concert to bring you a thorough unit study on marine animals. Both are divided into 8 Chapters:

Let’s Go Swim with the Dolphins
Playtime with the Sea Lions
Baby Birds and Their Families
Dinosaurs of the Seas: Marine Reptiles
Eight Armed Animals
Living Forever Under the Sea
Nudi, Nudi, Nudibranchs
Whale Sharks: World’s Biggest Fish

The DVD also offers a 9 minute bonus chapter, The Ocean Alphabet, taking you on a tour of ocean life whose names begin with each letter of the alphabet. The Educator Guide contains a bonus section, Annie Teaches You About SCUBA Diving. The DVD offers a choice of English or Spanish language.

The recommended age for the videos is PreK and up. The Educator Guide is written in 2 books, one for PreK-K and one for grades 1-3. Although Ben is older than the recommended age (grade 5), I found plenty of useful information and activities in the Guide for grades 1-3 to use with him.

While the DVD has much to offer, The Educator Guide is chock full of even more information about the ocean biome, teaching across the curriculum, including science, geography, language arts, math, art, music, and character. It is written by Michelle Hoffman-Trotter and Annie Crawley, with the collaboration of an impressive team of educators, scientists and designers.
Matching up with the DVD, The Educator Guide offers lesson plans for each chapter, containing a plethera of activities, such as:

Character education
Imaginative play
Discussion questions
Activity stations
Ocean vocabulary
Websites to explore
Book lists
Activities for independent learning
Tips to help the environment

While it is obvious that the lesson plans are written for the classroom setting, they are easily adaptable for homeschool use.

Much use of imagination is encouraged, often asking the children to imagine they are a certain animal, with scripted imagery for the teacher to read. This is so perfectly suited for the younger kids!

There are loads of printables, including coloring pages, puzzles, and several pages that are easily adaptable for lapbooking or notebooking use. Each section also has a transcript of each DVD chapter.

There are many suggestions for teaching methods in The Educator Guide as well, such as using the KWL method, word maps and anticipation guides, and journaling. At the end of The Educator Guide, you’ll also find a master book list and an appendix aligning each lesson with key educational standards (great for those of you who must report to your state officials).

I looked and looked for the evolutionary content that usually fills science curriculum for classroom use, but apart from one statement about sea turtles “living at the time of dinosaurs”, I found nothing. And since we do believe sea turtles (and everything else) lived at the time of dinosaurs, I didn’t take issue with this statement at all.

Overall, I found this product to be simply lovely.

You can purchase these DVDs from Annie Crawley’s website for $19.95 each. The Educator Guide in printed form is rather expensive (likely because they were written with schools in mind) at $299 for both levels. However, when purchasing any of the DVDs, if you’ll mention in the comments that you homeschool and would like to have the PDF version of The Educator Guide, she will send it to you for free (a $70 value). Currently, she is also offering free shipping on the DVDs.

Other members of the Homeschool Crew have reviewed this product, as well as the other 2 I mentioned. To find out what they thought, click over to the Homeschool Crew blog.

A special thank you to Ocean Annie for introducing us to your lovely DVDs! You’ve inspired my son to want to learn to scuba dive!

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received this product, at no cost to me, in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are those of myself and/or my son.

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