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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Preparing for our new baby!

We are having our baby very soon! I wanted to do a few activities with Honey Pot and Little M&M to help them prepare. We did this five years ago with Honey Pot, and it was a great success. Click on the link below to look back on how we prepared our toddler for her new brother:

New Baby Theme, 2012

This time our big siblings are much older than toddlers. So to begin, we purchased a new book called Babies Don't Eat Pizza from Amazon. There are so many great big sibling books out there for toddlers and preschoolers, but I wanted something for older kids--something that went into a little more detail. And this book was perfect! We read all about what they can expect when mom and dad go to the hospital, and how their new baby will grow. We often stopped to discuss things and answer their questions while reading.

 

Next we made a countdown! I was inspired by this one that I found on Pinterest. When we were 20 days from our due date, we traced each of our hands, only gluing down the palms. We explained to the kids that sometimes babies come early, so it was possible that they'd have to fold down the last few all at once. And in our situation, we wouldn't go beyond that date, so it works well for us.

Here it is after a couple of days:

And a few more!

And finally, just as we did the first time around, we had our big siblings decorate onesies for their baby sister! We slipped a piece of cardboard inside them, and had the kids use fabric markers.

These are really special for them, and I can't wait to see our new baby wearing the clothes they decorated for her!

Beach Theme & Intro to Quiet Bins!

Greetings! The beginning of the school year has brought with it many changes in our home. Honey Pot has begun full-day Kindergarten and Little M&M has started going to preschool part-time. This has drastically decreased our time at home for themed activities, but we have found a way to make it work. Take a look at what we did:

Books

As with other themes, we began our week by borrowing a number of books from the library. This week's theme is the BEACH, since we have our annual Outer Banks vacation coming up soon. Here are the books we found on the subject.

The kids' favorites were When a Dragon Moves In and Aqualicious. Such cute stories for young kids.

Quiet Bins

Instead of completing a number of activities and crafts throughout the week in our usual way, we have decided to implement quiet bins during the school year, as a way to complete some themed activities on limited time. I had seen these on Pinterest and had never really had a use for them before. But with the kids' schedules getting busier, my husband and I still wanted one-on-one time with each child. So here is how it works.

Every Sunday night I put together two bins full of quiet activities to do. Bin #1 has themed activities in it, and bin #2 has other activities. Each night in the half hour before bedtime, my husband will sit with Honey Pot and bin #1, while I sit with Little M&M and bin #2. Every other night of the school week, we switch kids, giving us quality and quiet time with each child and each bin. For the first month of school, this has been a SUPER success. The kids really look forward to "Quiet Time" each night.

Here is our beach-themed bin for the week:

Inside we had the beach/ocean page from Melissa and Doug's reusable sticker pad, an ocean jigsaw puzzle, blank paper with ocean stencils (Oriental Trading, and the BEST stencils I have found) and thin markers, a boat lacing activity, and ocean dot pages (Gift of Curiosity) with magnets and a magnetic wand.

And here is what we put in the non-themed bin this week:

Inside this one is our geoboard with some designs for inspiration printed out (from here and here), wikki stix inside a miniature binder with cardboard pages both blank and with shapes to trace, two construction truck puzzles, a Frozen look and find book, and homemade playdoh with tools and assorted cutouts.

Countdown

I am a little bored of chain countdowns, especially since it is difficult for young kids to help assemble them. So this year I came up with something different. I printed out four pages of a simple beach background, as well as various beach-themed clip art. I wrote the numbers 11 through 1 on the background, and each picture had a corresponding amount of dots on the back. 

Each morning, the kids would count the dots, in search of the one that matched the highest number showing. After gluing it on, the new highest number that was showing, was how many days remained until the vacation!

It was taped up on the wall, in a prime location so we were sure to see it every day, multiple times a day. This really helped to build the excitement.

Here are the kids on the morning of our vacation. They both wanted the privilege of gluing the last picture on, so they covered up number one together. Then we were off!

Teacher Appreciation Gift

We decided to bring shells back for Honey Pot and Little M&M's teachers. During our beach walks, we found a few full shells with holes in them. So we chose these, tied a ribbon through them, and attached them to this poem that I created. The kids were so excited to bring them in for their teachers, and the teachers were equally as pleased to receive them. So glad we did this!

(Honey Pot did her own writing in the To/From sections, and Little M&M wrote just his initials while I wrote the To/From sections for him. But please excuse where I have erased the names.)

Also take a look at our other beach/ocean themes from previous years:

Beach Theme 2012

Beach Theme 2013

Ocean Theme 2014