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!

O is for Ocean!

We had a fun week all about the letter O and oceans! Keep scrolling to see what Sweet E and I did, or click on one of the links below to revisit similar themes from the past.

Summer Units, Fish - 2016

O is for Outer Space - 2015

The Ocean - 2014

The Letter O - 2013

Books

Now that the libraries are open again, we stopped in for a few ocean books! There are a ton of books about individual sea creatures, so we just stuck to the ocean in general. The two on the bottom are from our own collection and are favorites of ours!

Introducing the Letter O

I made a simple page for her to become familiar with the letter O. She had to trace it, stamp it, poke it with a giant pushpin, and build it with playdoh.

She loves doing this!

Fine Motor - Making Waves

I printed this fun sheet from the Education website. Then I provided Sweet E with a q-tip and paint, and invited her to trace along the waves!

Gross Motor - Sea Creature Relay

For this next activity we went outside and played the classic fill-the-bucket game, using a couple bath toys instead of sponges. She and Little M&M had to start at the far bucket, dip their sea creatures in, run back to this bucket, and squeeze the water into it. They kept going until the closer bucket was full!

Soaking her sea creature!

Squeezing is such a great activity to strengthen those hand muscles!

They had so much fun!

Once it was filled up and spilling over the edge, they won the game!

Fishing for Letters

I made a fishing pole for Sweet E out of a stick, string and a magnet. Then while I was cutting out some fish, I had Sweet E give them each an eye using a roll of stickers we have on hand.

I wrote a letter on each fish, and stuck a paperclip onto them. Then I set up the ocean using some patterned paper that looks like water. (I love finding these gems in my old scrapbooking stash!)

And finally we were ready to go fishing! She sat at our picnic table (our boat) and cast her line into the ocean.

Each time she caught a fish she would identify the letter and place it in her bucket.

She loved this game so much!!

Once she had caught all the fish, we flipped over our ocean, where I had written each letter from A-O, and she matched them up.

After that, she returned her fish to the ocean, and played again. And again. And again. I'm telling you, this game was a hit!

She even caught two fish at once!

Ocean Craft

For our craft this week, we first needed to cut up some bleeding tissue paper. We used three shades of blue.

Then we covered an entire sheet of white cardstock with our tissue paper squares.

Next she used a squirt bottle to get the whole thing wet. We did this inside an inflatable tray, which came with her kinetic sand kit, to contain the mess!

Once it was completely saturated we let it sit for just a minute or two.

When we peeled up all the squares, we were left with a beautiful blue piece of paper!

Once it had dried, she glued on a few ocean creatures.

I think it came out super cute!!

Snorkeling for Numbers

This activity was inspired by a video by TheDadLab. First I created a sheet of paper that included the numbers 1 through 10, inside of various sea creatures. Then I slid it under a clear casserole dish.

Next I filled it with a mixture of water and blue paint, so it was slightly opaque. Using a clear cup, we were able to view the pictures underneath.

She moved the cup around, and each time she found a sea creature, she'd identify the number inside it, and mark it on her paper.

It's hard to photograph, but here is an idea of what it looked like.

She kept going until she found all of the numbers!

Fish Ice Cubes - Color Mixing

Using a fish-shaped ice cube tray, I made fish in primary colors.

Then we did a little color mixing experiment!

First we mixed some red and yellow fish together in the water, to see what would happen.

I asked her to make the fish swim around, while we waited for the ice cubes to melt. Great sensory activity; she just loved dunking her hands in there!

Soon, the fish were gone and the water had turned orange! So we marked it on our paper.

Next, we dumped the water and refilled it so we could mix some yellow and blue fish!

After the fishies swam around for a minute, the water turned green!

Finally, we mixed together the red and blue fish, to see what color the water would turn.

It made purple!

It was a very fun week indeed! And we're excited for letter P next week. Stay tuned!