Homeschool Theme of the Week: Oceans and Beaches!

We had a break recently when family came to visit us and then we traveled to visit family.  But we are back in the swing of things - at least for a couple weeks until we finish the year.  This week's theme was "Ocean and Beaches"...

We did not have a sandbox handy for this theme, nor do I know of any great beaches nearby.  Sooo, I made my own sandbox/beach.  I bought a plastic container and dumped some play sand inside.  Miss A loved it and enjoyed making sand castles, digging for "treasures", etc.  Who needs a real beach anyway...

This is an activity called an "ocean in a bottle".  See here for directions on how to make your own.  We should have used more food coloring to make the water darker so you could see the division between the water and oil and benefit from a better visual of wave action.  Oh well.  Miss A still liked making this.  We added shells and fish buttons and some sand to ours.

I saw a cute idea here on Pinterest regarding putting treasures under shells.  I put my own spin on it and wrote a number on the bottom of each shell to use for addition facts.  Miss A would turn over two shells, add the two numbers together, write the number sentence in the sand, and if she was correct - would get to keep the two shells.  Then I would have a turn.  At the end, we laid our shells out (matching one to one) in lines to see who had more.

Part of the fun of going to the beach is searching for treasures in the sand which have been washed ashore.  But if you don't have a beach, you make do with your homemade sandbox (pretend beach).  While my daughter was busy with something else, I wrote out some words related to our theme and buried them in the sand for her to find and read.  As a special treat, I also put some gumdrops in a bag with the tag "buried treasure" and hid those in the sand as well.  :)

This was our fun snack for the week!  See details here.

While walking through a craft store one day, I was struck by the gorgeous jeweled tones of some acrylic gems and how they seemed to resemble the shiny, colorful scales of a fish.  Soooo, I bought some, drew a fish outline, and let Miss A pour on the glue and gems (the glue began to overwhelm the gem part so we added glitter to help).  I am thinking this would have been a super activity to go along with "The Rainbow Fish".

My plan for this activity was to do a crayon resist painting.  Miss A picked a page from a book, then drew and colored the scene on watercolor paper.  However, I made the mistake of having Miss A use crayons which were washable.  So of course, when she began to watercolor her picture, the crayon seemed to do less resisting and more blending.  I told her to try to avoid the other crayon areas and just paint around them instead.  So much for the "resist" part.  Oh well.  I am now wiser for it, I suppose.

We created a coral "garden" or "zoo" using cheerios glued onto shapes Miss A cut out.  The original activity (here) called for puffed rice, I believe.  However, I didn't have puffed rice so we used cheerios instead.  She then painted the cheerios to match the color of the shape and glued them onto a paper she had watercolored.

We also made "ocean pie" for our dessert night on Friday.  It was super easy and something fun that Miss A could easily help make.  I will try to post the details later...

We finished off the week by watching Disney's "Oceans" (a really well done documentary about ocean life) and eating fish tacos and "ocean pie".

By the way, if you are fortunate enough to live near an upscale grocery store with a great fresh seafood section - think possible field trip!  I know it sounds crazy, but I was shocked at all the neat creatures we saw at one  - dead - but real.  I think Miss A was highly intrigued by them, as was I.

Looking for some ocean themed books?  See below.


NOTE:  I'd love to feature some of my readers!!  If you have an infant or child related post or party you would like to share, please send me a link at michelle.natureofgrace@gmail.com and I will take a look.  :)






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