This is a perfect theme for summer and M had a blast exploring the various ocean animals. It’s a vast theme and figuring out the activities that engage her was not easy. To keep it simple we focused on vocabulary, math skills and fun crafts.
▪️Vocabulary
We started off the theme by playing the Melissa & Doug fishing puzzle toy. It’s great for fine motor skills and naming the ocean animals.
I prepared these ocean animal cards for an object to picture matching activity . The sea creatures are Terra brand set I purchased sometime back.
I love the realistic images on these cards and even if they were not similar objects she could match most of them without help. She loved this activity and we did this many times over the week.
▪️Math Skills
I gathered the other sea animals in sets from the collection and counted them all. Using our wooden number peg set she did some counting and pegging practice.
You could ask questions like which animal is more or less, how many are in total etc. Having something concrete to count help them learn these math skills better.
▪️Hands on Worksheets
These are some fun worksheets to go along with ocean theme. You can find many other ocean theme free printables in her blog.
Another hands on worksheet she enjoyed working on. I encouraged her to cut it out into each strips and then using glue stick she pasted them back on a blue paper in the correct order.
Her big brother joined in for a fun ocean animal graphing game. We used some transparent color chips as counters and they raced to see which animal is going to win.
Here’s a hands on math activity to learn number correspondence. We used our blue pebbles as counters. Having all the cards set out was bit overwhelming for her so present only 1-2 cards at a time based on the child’s ability.
Another Melissa & Doug favorite- the reusable sticker pad. Both of my kids enjoyed doing the scenes multiple times and they even created stories with the scenes. A great way to develop creativity and imagination.
▪️Books
For any theme reading books are a must and we read some of the best books on ocean theme. You can check out the list below.
▪️Crafts
One of her favorite book was Rainbow Fish and hence I decided to create a book based craft for her.
Supplies needed:
- Paper plate
- Blue tempera paint
- Multicolored paper
- Glitter
- Googly eyes
Paint the plate blue and once it’s dried cut out a triangle shape from one side and staple at the end as a tail. Then add the googly eyes.
Cut out mini circles from multicolored paper and fold it. Let them glue one end on the plate to create the effect of colorful fins. At the end add some glitters on the fins for the shining effect.
We did a quick ocean craft using some basic supplies. First she painted a watercolor paper blue and then I gave her some cut up felt to add as plants. While she was doing that I cut small fishes out of multicolored paper. She glued some fish on her ocean and added small eyes for them too.
I printed off an ocean coloring page and gave her some watercolors to paint. You could see her having fun with all her favorite colors
▪️Sensory Play
Sensory play is very important at this age and I offer multiple options to have an all senses learning experience for her. Playdough is the easiest and engaging medium for a fun sensory play. They could roll, stamp and cut out ocean animals using the cutters. They can even create their own ocean world with those animals.
Sensory bins are always a wonderful activity to develop hand eye coordination. They can have endless fun pouring and scooping in the bin.You can also sneak in some learning activities too in the bin.
I used blue dyed rice and blue pebbles for the fillers. We did an ocean animal shadow match along with this ocean bin. I laminated the free shadow match printables so that they could stand the wrath in the bin.
We wrapped up our Ocean theme with a weekend trip to our nearby aquarium. Having a field trip related to your current lessons just amplifies the learning experience. I’m glad that she could recognize some of the animals we learned at the aquarium. But above all we had quality family time and tons of fun.