Over the past few months, the children have really been enjoying and engaged in learning about the ocean. The children have been able to pull knowledge from their own visits to the beach, going boating, visiting the aquarium, the fish tank in our classroom, books, and lets not forget Finding Dory.
We talked about about keeping our oceans clean and what happens when people litter. To demonstrate, we put magnets in our ocean and fished out all of the garbage with our magnetic fishing poles. This made space for the fish to swim and be happy!
This activity was a hit and the children were very proud when all the garbage was picked up.
L and G cleaning our ocean.
We read the book My Visit to the Aquarium and their imaginations were running wild, talking all about the kelp forest and scuba feedings. P and D working together in our deep sea sensory bin.
The children explored the cold open sea tank where fish have space to grow. It was filled with huge sharks, big whales, sea shells, dolphins, fishes, rocks and many other sea creatures.
C and S working on matching the fish to the correct color.
M working on matching the fish and also helping a friend.
P, A, and S working on counting dots on the fish and then finding the matching number.
After the children cleaned up the ocean, we put paper clips on the fish so that they could catch healthy fish with their magnetic fishing poles. A got really excited that she could catch more than one fish at a time!
Teacher Aimee read The Seahorse Song to us, and then we found the audio to the song online. It very quickly became a class favorite! Feel free to take home you child's project (it's in their take-home file) and read their personalized story which really brings their ocean to life. We used many different materials all worked into one masterpiece over a period of several days. The children were very proud of their hard work!
L working on step one - using oil pastels
S working on step two - water colors
G working on step 3 - rubbing and dabbing the water color
Friends working on step 4- ripping the tissue paper
D, S, and M concentrating on their seaweed
L and S working on step 5 - gluing their tissue as seaweed
L working on step 6 - coloring and cutting out seahorses
M working hard to stay in the lines
S working on the final step (and probably the favorite) - Glitter glue on the seahorses, and then after they dried, gluing them into their ocean scene.
Working math into our interest in ocean sea life. P and G measuring with unifix cubes. How long will each animal be?
L and L realized that the longest was the squid and the shortest was the crab.
Using our wooden shape blocks to build different sea animals
M and L felt inspired to make a big fish out of play dough, making all the scales and adding then to the fish.
Here's D working on his name with glue and sprinkling colored sand. This activity was neat on many levels, because their name with sand made the sea floor for our rainbow fish project that followed.
The other children loved watch one another to see what colors they would pick. You never know what you'll find on the ocean floor!
Hugs,
Teacher Kristina
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