Homeschool Preschool - Beach/Ocean Activities

In the two weeks leading up to our beach trip, Sweet E and I did lots of beach and ocean activities! It had been two (pandemic-filled) years since our last vacation, so we were overdue. Take a look at the fun learning activities we did to help us get psyched!

Books

Painting Sea Stars - Invisible Numbers

A spin on our usual invisible number activity. As usual I wrote numbers inside each sea star with a white crayon. But this time I also provided Sweet E with a page of dots, so she could count them up and color in the box that matched the number she just revealed.

Rice Sensory Bin - Ocean Animal Sorting

This free printable came from Teachers Pay Teachers, and Sweet E had SO much fun with it! I used a scalloped circle punch to cut out all the ocean animals, and I hid them in a bin of our rainbow rice.

As Sweet E found them, she could name the animal and match it up where it belongs.

It became a sort of a game, to see which ocean animal would win! Lo and behold it was the shark. 😉

She happily finished finding each and every one!

Even Little M&M joined us at the end, and the two of them kept hiding the ocean animals back in the rice so they could find them again.

And at the end, well, you know what always happens...😂

Cutting Practice

Learning Notebook - Using Stencils

Ocean Puzzles and Games

Feed the Shark Game

Free printable shark from Mommy Made That, though instead of using the colored fish, I printed blank fish from somewhere else and added numbers for a dice game!

Sweet E counted up the dots on the dice.

Found the fish with that number, and fed the hungry shark!

I had some extra fish, and Sweet E wanted to cut them out herself for some more scissor practice!

Clamshell Sound Match

I saw this idea from Turner Tots, but there was no free printable so I made my own in Photoshop. Sweet E needed to pick up a picture, and put that "pearl" into the clamshell with the right beginning sound.

Travel Journal

When each of the kids turned three, I had them decorate a composition notebook for a travel journal. (Sweet E is 4, but this was her first vacation since turning 3.) Then, each evening of our trip, I sat down with her and transcribed her version of that day's events. Honey Pot and Little M&M write about their days on their own now, and they have so much fun looking back on previous entries!

Shapes and Kinetic Sand

To begin, I drew a square in our kinetic sand, for Sweet E to cover with seashells. This was a nice, tactile way to do some shape review!

Then Sweet E wanted to draw her own shapes, which was wonderful!

She chose a triangle...

Then drew a rectangle to cover...

Then a circle...

And finally, a heart. Loved that she came up with all of these by herself. And how cute is that heart?!

Octopus Color Code

I saw this idea on Instagram from APlayFilledLife. Such a fun, quick activity for letter review and beginning coding skills!

Sand Castle Craft

First Sweet E helped crush up some graham crackers. This craft idea comes from Making Mama Magic, except they used real sand instead of graham crackers.

I put the graham cracker crumbs into a small sand pail, with a shovel, and invited Sweet E to create a sandcastle in her inflatable tray (which I LOVE for containing messy activities).

She started by squeezing glue onto all the lines.

I expected her to just do the outline, but she wanted to do the windows too!

Then she sprinkled the "sand" on top.

After dumping the excess off, she was left with this beautiful creation! Love how it came out!

Collecting Seashells - Countdown

Every time we go to the beach, we make some kind of a countdown. Paper chains are great, but I love coming up with fun, new ways to count down. This year we made a bucket, with a slot inside. Then each morning, the kids can place the seashell with the highest number inside the bucket, and see how many days are left.

Now that our trip is over, we've got lots of holiday fun coming up--Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all in a row! Stay tuned!

Beach Activities!

Our family is heading to the Outer Banks for a week! To prepare for our vacation, we did some beach activities. Click on the links below to revisit similar themes, or keep scrolling to see what we did this week!

Beach Theme (+ Introduction to Quiet Bins) 2015

The Ocean 2014

Beach Theme 2013

Beach Theme 2012

Books

We borrowed several books about the beach this week, but Sweet E had a definite favorite. I think we read each of them a couple times, but we read "At the Beach" over and over and over. It's a good one!

Countdown

We always create a fun countdown about twenty days before we leave. This year we did something new! Sweet E helped to color the sand pail, and the big kids helped to cut out the seashell numbers. Each morning, we placed one seashell into the bucket! I had created a pocket there by cutting the hole out of the sand pail, and taping another sheet of paper behind it. The kids loved this!

Mega Bloks Puzzles

I printed some cute puzzles from ABCs to ACTs with beach pictures on them, and taped the puzzles onto our Mega Bloks. I remember we did something similar during Little M&M's C is for Car week, as well as our 2014 Valentine's Day theme. It was a hit then too! Such a clever idea.

Sweet E loved putting these puzzles together!

She asked to do it again right away, and even had her stuffed Tiger join her!

Color-Matching - Beach Balls

I created these colorful beach balls in Photoshop Elements, and printed two copies. Then I cut out one copy, and asked Sweet E to match them up!

We talked about the names of the colors, and she matched them with no trouble.

When she finished she asked, "One more time?"

Of course, she had to hop up onto the couch and reach over to finish it this time.

And we actually did it three times in a row!

Beach - Small World

We have done several small world bins in our many years of Tot School. Fake snow with Santa and reindeer toys, construction trucks with an assortment of dirt and rocks, dinosaurs in sand, frogs on lily pads in the water, etc. But my top two would definitely be The Arctic bin from 2016 and this one! I happened to have a sheet of scrapbooking paper that looked like ocean waves. Combined with our kinetic sand, a few seashells, scraps of felt for towels, and some Playmobil toys from my own childhood, we had a pretty great setup!

Sweet E was so excited to dig in! 

We each took a character to play with, and they had all sorts of adventures! Things that we would do on our vacation, which we also read about in our beach books!

  

They made sand castles!

And buried one another in the sand!

The went swimming in the ocean!

Made footprints in the sand!

The fun went on and on. We later took out kinetic sand molds and made some crabs. Here is Sweet E getting in some counting practice!

And then playing some more!

I reset the bin, so that Honey Pot and Little M&M could have some fun with it after school. They loved it too!

Exploring Seashells - Fine Motor

This was a simple activity I did with Little M&M when he was one. But Sweet E also enjoyed it at two! She pushed all of the seashells into the empty wipes container, emptied it out, and started again!

Exploring Seashells - Playdough

And this part was Sweet E's idea actually. She wanted to play with the seashells in playdough! So I set her up with the playdough, our shells, and some tools. And I let her play while I was nearby in the kitchen.

She loved pushing them into the playdough, and making prints!

Hand Print Crab

We did this during a previous beach unit as well and it was super cute. I found a sheet of beach paper in my old scrapbooking stash, painted Sweet E's hands, and pressed them onto the paper. We used peach paint, because on our beach vacations we see a lot of sand crabs, and they blend in with the sand! When the paint dried, Sweet E helped to glue on two eyes.

And she squirt glue onto the paper for clouds!

We used some cotton balls. And she also glued on one small shell.

Here is the final product, and it is adorable!

She was so proud of her work!

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