Something for everyone to do

I'm working on a project with our kindergarten aged daughter :cry. She's doing a report on Dolphins, and I have this idea of doing a word find with her that has words associated with dolphins.. could be anything from "cute" to "dolphin"... Anything come to mind?

Thanks.

 

So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that grow (around you)
So long so long and thanks for all the fish

The world’s about to be destroyed
There’s no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the world dissolve (around you)

Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your pregnant women

So long so long, so long so long, so long so long, so long so long
So long so long, so long so long, so long so long, so long so long
So long so long and thanks for all the fish

If I had just one last wish
I would like a tasty fish
If we could just change one thing
We would all have learned to sing

Come one and all
Man and mammal
Side by side in life's great gene pool

So long so long, so long so long, so long so long, so long so long
So long so long, so long so long, so long so long, so long so long
So long so long and thanks for all the fish

 

echolocation (sonar)

 

tuna (nets)

 

Pod - Group of Dolphins
Smart - which they are
graceful - OK, so it's a little long for kindergardners maybe, but hey, they are.
calf - baby dolphin


~C

 

Have you ever wondered what the word for ‘dolphin’ was in other languages? Well, I’ve got a dictionary in front of me that provides simultaneous translations in 26 languages. Let’s have a quick look through, shall we? Let’s see…

English: dolphin
French: dauphin
Italian: delfino
Spanish: delfin
German: delfin
Dutch: dolfijn
Swedish: delfin
Lithuaina: delfina
Hungarian: delfin

Hey hold on a second, I think there might be a bit of a pattern here. The word ‘dolphin’ is pretty much the same in all of these languages. How can this be? Where did the word ‘dolphin’ come from that it became almost universal? In today’s episode, we will dig a bit deeper into this mystery to shed light on the ancient history of the word ‘dolphin’.

The study of the science of language is called linguistics, but the study of the origin and history of words is called etymology. This is not to be confused with the word entomology, which is the study of insects. I suppose the study of the origin of the word insect would be entoetymology. Or that the study of the origin of the word for insects living on the planet Endor would be endorentoetymology … But, I digress...

In our quest to solve the mystery of the origins of the word ‘dolphin’, our first step is to look up the word in a dictionary of Old English. Old English (otherwise called Anglo-Saxon) is the language spoken over 1,500 years ago in parts of what is present-day England. According to my dictionary, the Old English world for dolphin was … Delfin. Great. Well, this shows that “dolphin” has a root that is at least 1,500 years old in English, but that still doesn’t tell us where it came from originally. Incidently .......

.....so goes that The Greys are in fact descendants of ancient dolphin species – a ‘dolphin-based life form’. Since the dolphins are associated with the gods and the Grays are related to dolphins and dolphin means womb … oh never mind, I don’t know what the heck is going on with the explanation, but you get the idea.

The point is that the word ‘dolphin’ is clearly related to the ancient Greek word ‘womb’ - for whatever reason. If you find that this association is too strange for you, feel free to switch over to the Celtic descriptions and call them ‘sea-pigs’.

 

I don't mean to bump this or anything, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone. We made the word find, and I hear it was a hit.

Thanks again.