24 WWW.PGCITIZEN.CA | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 201 7 THE AWARD-WINNING PRINT & ONLINE FAMILY FEATURE Find Kid Scoop on Facebook ©2017 by Vicki Whiting, Editor Jeff Schinkel, Graphics Vol. 33, No. 45 eft ea otters spend a lot of time swimming and hunting for food, but still have plenty of time for play. And watching a sea otter at play brings a smile to nearly anyone’s face. Sea otters are mammals and need to breathe air. They rest on their backs riding the swells of the sea. To keep from floating away, they wrap themselves in kelp that is growing out of the sea floor. Standards Link: Life Science: Students know that living organisms have distinct structures and body systems that serve specific functions in survival. Fabulous Fur Food Bocks! Sea otters eat crabs, clams and red sea urchins. Cracking the hard shells of these animals is a challenge, but the sea otter has found a solution. It is one of the few animals to use a tool. A hungry sea otter finds a rock on the sea floor, tucks it beneath a flap of loose skin under a forelimb, grabs a few clams and swims to the surface. Once there, the otter rolls over onto its back and places the rock on its chest. It bangs a clam against the rock until it breaks open then scoops out and eats the morsel of meat. Circle what should come next in each row. ea otters have very little body fat and rely on their fabulous fur to keep them warm in the cold Pacific____________. Their fur is thick—really thick—perhaps the_________________fur in the world. If you were to put a penny on a sea otter, it would__________________about 250,000 hairs. That is more than twice the____________________of hair on your entire head. Otter fur holds tiny air bubbles, which serve as insulation against the__________________. If a sea otter’s fur gets_________ it won’t hold air as well. These creatures clean themselves often so that their fur can do its job. Draw a line to where each missing word belongs. Find the otter that is different from the others. The Outstanding Letter ‘O’ Imagine a world without the letter O. Using an article from today’s newspaper, cross out all the words containing the letter O, Give the article to a friend. Can your friend understand the article? Standards Link: Reading Comprehension: Understand word meanings from context clues. tGd seoo|> Puzzler oner Appetite Each day, a sea otter eats one-fourth of its own weight in food. That would be like: icd scoop word Search * * * a 60-pound person eating 5+5+5=______________ pounds of food in one day. a 100-pound person eating 10 + 12 + 3 =_________ pounds of food in one day. a 148-pound person eating 15 + 17 + 5 =_________ pounds of food in one day. Do the math to find out how many pounds of food each person would eat if he or she were a sea otter! Standards Link: Number Sense: Solve problems using addition. OTTERS PACIFIC KELP URCHINS CLAMS TOOL DENSEST MORSEL SWELLS SOLUTION BUBBLES WEIGHT SMILE HAIR ROCKS Find the words by looking up, down, backwards, forwards, sideways and diagonally. B M S L L E w S P L U 0 s M A L c S A N B R N W Y 1 F R S 0 B S I E F P L E K I L E H I S L 0 T C T E L C G M T 0 T 0 U S A R H I 0 T 0 R L P E U T L R I A H 0 R S T S E S N E D S Standards Link: Letter sequencing. Recongized identical words. Skim and scan reading. Recall spelling patterns. Otter Home Read the classified ads listing homes for sale. Based on what you learned from today’s Kid Scoop page about otters, write a classified ad describing the perfect home for an otter. Standards Link: Writing Applications: Write brief descriptions about objects. WMT ft The be$T W$y To caTch a crab? rnoA oi i! mojui 9U08W0S sabh :U3MSNV Are you an eagle-eyed reader? Read the articles below and correct the eight spelling and grammar errors you find. The first one is done for you. Potential Fur-tastrophe! Sea otters once ranged from Baja California to Canada. Today, they are only found in a small area of California’s CocJ5+ central (UUp Wear there were once hundreds of thousands, there are now less than 3,000. Hunted In the 1700s, european and Russian sailors discovered sea otters along the west cost of the United States and hunted them for their thick, warm fur. Over the kourse of nearly 200 years, hundreds of thousands of sea otters were killed. In 1911, so few were left that people agreed to step hunting them. By 1938, many scientists thought they had died out and become extinct. In March of 1938, Howard Sharpe, an author who lived on the California coast, saw a small groop of otters. That discovery jump-started an effort by scientists and environmentalists to help this little colony grow. Endangered Otters Today, there is still a struggle to keep otters from becoming extinckt. Pollution from pesticides and waste from humans and their pets wash into the sea. These make otters sick. California passed a law to stop pet waste from being dumped into the ocean. Coastal Cleanup Days also help protect sea otters. Standards Link: Editing: Edit drafts to correct spelling and grammar. • Kid Scoop • VOCABULARY • BUILDERS This week’s word: INSULATE The verb insulate means to cover or surround with something that stops the movement of heat. Air bubbles in their fur insulate sea otters from the cold. Try to use the word insulate in a sentence today when talking with your friends and family. Write Onl Talking Otter You have been asked to interview a talking otter on a television show. Write up this imaginary interview. What will you ask the otter? What will the otter say in response? R0011258738