Dive Into Your Imagination is a production company started by Annie Crawley, an underwater cinematographer and educator, who hopes to change the way a new generation views the ocean. Because we "protect what we love", says Annie, the goal of Dive Into Your Imagination is to help people of all ages fall in love with our ocean!
While the goal and purpose of the educational videos and guides is to help people of all ages fall in love with the ocean and its beautiful creatures, it's not all pretty pictures and basic information. By engaging the wonderful tool of Imagination within the context of learning pertinent facts and starting in-depth conversations, these videos and the corresponding Educator Guides become a relevant and useful tool in a classroom or homeschool setting.
Great effort has been put into gathering together a set of activities and curriculum that meets up with the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) not only in the area of Science, but Math and Literacy as well. Furthermore, the lesson plans are also designed to achieve benchmarks for the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, and Ocean Literacy Standards. Yep, not only is Annie passionate about getting us all to LOVE our oceans, she's also passionate about providing relevant curriculum that meets or exceeds our expectations and provides a fact-based platform for learning to have that Love relationship!
We were sent a copy of the DVD "Who Lives in the Sea?" and given access to the corresponding educator guides pdf files for grades PreK/K and 1-3. Both individual guides have over 300 pages each, containing a wealth of information and ideas. Each chapter corresponds with a portion of the video and includes a list of required materials, objectives, character education, treasure chest of vocabulary words, imagination play script, classroom activity stations (really cool!), extension ideas (including lots of suggested books!), CCSS alignment, and more!
Educator Guides
If you have children who are interested in knowing more about sea creatures, have a classroom of curious kids that you want to give sea-life unit studies to, or have an interest in spreading love for our oceans to the grandkids in your life, this might be a great resource for you!
The Who Lives in the Sea DVD is part of a series. Each DVD is available for $19.95.
The Educator Guides are available as a printed version for $299 (for the set of two grade level guides pertaining to each DVD) or as individual PDFs for $69.95. As a special for the Homeschool Crew and The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and followers Annie Crawley (of Dive Into Your Imagination) will provide a set of PDFs with purchase of the DVDs FREE of charge! When you place your DVD order, just let her know in the notes that you are a Homeschool Parent! What a great deal!
With products from books to DVDs to colorful greeting cards, there is something to engage the hearts and imaginations of everyone in the Dive Into Your Imagination store!
We found that watching through the video straight through was an enjoyable rainy-day activity, though the overall feel of the speech and songs had more of a preschool feel than an elementary feel. We did watch this several times before diving into one of the chapters of the educator guide for grades 1-3. By that time, the kids were very familiar with dolphins and coming up with answers to the discussion questions was automatic. The kids had a blast pretending to be scuba divers and then pretending to be a pod of dolphins! I was very pleased with the conversations we had about how there are stories of dolphins protecting humans, "So why don't humans protect dolphins?". They enjoyed the activities and worksheets, and I found the Educator Guides to be thorough, arranged well for ease-of-use, and of top quality. I'm not sure what format the printed version of the guides is, but if the pdf version is any indication, you won't be disappointed if you make that purchase for your classroom.
To read what other TOS Crewmembers are saying about Dive Into Your Imagination: Who Lives in the Sea? and other DIYI products, go to the Crew blog post here!
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