Great white shark facts you can tell your 4-year-old
A great white shark has no bones, about 300 teeth and can grow up to 6 meters long. Share a few true facts at a time and let your child see them.
Start with how big it is
A great white shark can grow up to about 20 feet (6 meters) long and weigh over 4,000 pounds. That is the first fact most children want to hear, and it is true.
A newborn great white, called a pup, is already about 4 feet (1.2 meters) long. Great whites live in temperate and subtropical waters around the world and often travel with the seasons to stay in water that is not too cold or too hot.
Scientists find a shark's exact age hard to work out. They think a great white can live 70 years or more. Children enjoy comparing that with a grandparent's age.
You do not need to tell it all at once. Pick two or three facts, say them slowly, and let your child ask questions. If you do not know an answer, say so and look it up together.
A skeleton without bones
A shark has no bones. Its skeleton is made of cartilage, a softer and more flexible material. Your child can feel cartilage in their own nose and ears.
Cartilage is light and flexible, which helps sharks swim faster and stay afloat in the water. Let your child bend the tip of their nose gently and say: a shark is built like this all over.
Shark skin is covered in tiny flat scales that act like armor. Together they feel like flexible, smooth chain mail, and they help water glide past the body.
Ask your child what else in their body is bendy like this. Ears and nose are the answers, and children enjoy finding them in a mirror and giving them a gentle wiggle.
Teeth that are always replaced
A great white has about 300 teeth. They are broad and triangular, with jagged, serrated edges.
Only two rows in each jaw are in use at any time. The other teeth wait in pockets in the jaw. When a tooth wears down or breaks, it drops out from the front and a new one moves forward to take its place.
Try it on paper. Draw a row of triangles, rub out the first one, and draw the next one one step forward. Children quickly see why a shark never runs out of teeth.
To picture 300, count thirty buttons or pebbles into a pile, then make ten piles. Your child sees how many teeth one shark has, and counting practice comes for free.
What a great white eats
A great white eats fish, invertebrates and marine mammals. Larger sharks often gather at seal and sea lion colonies.
Young sharks eat different food. They mostly eat fish that live near the bottom, smaller sharks and rays, schooling fish and squid.
Play a quick sorting game: would a shark eat a seal, a fish or an ice cream? Children love the silly answer, and then they remember the real one.
Some children ask whether sharks eat people. Answer calmly and honestly: a shark is a wild animal, and the ocean is its home. If your child stays worried, talk with a teacher or a pediatrician.
Smelling, sensing and breathing
A shark has a keen sense of smell. It can pick up fish oil and injured prey from up to several kilometers away.
On its head are tiny pores called ampullae of Lorenzini. They detect the weak electrical signals that animals give off when their muscles move.
A shark breathes with gills. Water flows over the gills, and they take oxygen from the water. Hold your hand flat and wave it slowly to show how water flows past.
Try a smell game at home. Hide a slice of orange in one of three rooms and let your child sniff it out. Say: this is how a shark follows a smell.
How the Great White Shark game fits in
In the game, your child touches the shark to hear the name of each body part. They compare its size with a grown-up, pull out a tooth and watch a new one move forward.
They choose what the shark eats, find where sharks live on a map and follow a real shark on its long trip. Everything is read aloud, so no reading is needed.
The game also has memory pairs and a ten-question quiz. Play for a few minutes, then go outside and measure the shark with a rope.
Afterwards, ask your child which fact they liked best and why. Let them tell you, in their own words, what a great white eats, how many teeth it has and how it breathes.