Water World

At Home Projects


Don't worry, this post isn't about that bad Kevin Kostner movie.
We went to a free children's exhibit called 'Under the Sea', with some friends this morning. For my local readers, it was at Crown Center and it was fun (check it out!).

I thought it would be cool to incorporate a few learning activities beforehand, to go with the theme. So, the day before, we did the following (all free and didn't take much time):

I gathered our ocean/sea themed books and read them with her. You can find online versions,  and of course, the library is also a great resource.

We used an empty strawberry container and filled it with blue tissue paper (left over from gifts). We added tiny paper fish and talked about how they live/navigate in the water and the many different kinds of fish.

We then filled a small storage container with aquarium rocks. I've been holding on to this unopened bag of rocks for 4 years (post fish) and finally found a use for them!
My girl LOVED this... the feel of the rocks and helping to pour them in. Expect to have a few scatter or tossed in the process...hey, a small price to pay for creating an ENTIRE ocean floor ecosystem!

We added items one-by-one and talked about each in detail (we used a tube of cheap ocean creatures).

I then buried a couple items at a time and asked her to find them. This was her favorite part (we only did this about 20 times). Also, this is where most of the scattered rocks happened...all the excited digging!

Next, some questions:

Does a cow live in the ocean/sea? NO!

Do dogs and cats live in the ocean/sea? NO!

Does the mailman live in the ocean/sea? NO!

This was all extremely funny to her.
Does an Octopus live in the ocean/sea? YES!

As a fun bonus, I printed free ocean/sea themed coloring sheets. I made extra to give friends at the outing.  Just print, hole punch and tie together.  

Here's where I snagged the free themed coloring sheets- click this link:First School.
This site is TRULY AWESOME (take some time to snoop around), TONS of free coloring sheets and activities (thanks to my friend Natalie for sharing this site info).

After the outing, we did a fast Octopus craft. The picture is pretty self-explanatory. A cardboard roll, 8 cuts for legs, paint and some google eyes.

p.s. this is the tube of ocean creatures we used with the aquarium rocks:
Safari Ltd Coral Reef Toob