Ocean Crafts

Kate and I have managed to squeeze in a few ocean crafts over the last couple of weeks.  

I covered a cardboard fish shape with foil and gave her oil pastels and Sharpies to make her own Rainbow Fish.

She colored an envelope and together we turned it into a shark.  Kate enjoyed a silly game where the shark asked for different letters to eat, and she would feed him.

She loves to play with shaving cream, so I squirted some on a tray and let her add acrylic paint and swirl it all around with a wooden skewer.

So pretty.
We read Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle, and I cut a seahorse shape out of card stock for Kate to marble.

 She pressed both sides into the pretty shaving cream and then we left it to dry.

 Kate played in the paint and shaving cream quite happily.

 After a while, Kate and I used the squeegee to scrape the shaving cream off of the seahorse.  Once it dried, Kate added an eye and a mouth.

We have read a lot of ocean themed books too.  She is especially fond of I Spy Under the Sea by Edward Gibbs.

O is for Octopus and Ocean

 I had this out on the table, and Kate spotted it immediately.  She was very excited to do some "homework".

 She is starting to understand 1:1 correspondence!  I love to see that moment when something just clicks for her.

 After the fifth leg, I had to help her with the dots.  We took turns sticking them on and counting them.

 I made her a special octopus in the ocean lunch.

 Kate is always happy to play in the water.  I added a drop of blue food coloring and gave her ocean animals to play with.

We visited the Ocean Explorium in New Bedford.

They have a female octopus.  Do you see the Lego bricks in the tank?  We learned that the staff members build Lego structures around her food, and she has to work to get the food out.

We found Nemo!

And Dory!

It was breakfast time for the sharks and stingrays.

It was fun to have Grandma with us!

These are shark eggs!  Wild!

This fish is a master of camouflage on the sandy ocean floor.

Kate's FAVORITE part of the Ocean Explorium was the touch tank.  At first, she was timid and would only look or touch certain critters.  She quickly warmed up and became braver.  Then she wanted to touch and hold everything.  The staff members were very patient, knowledgeable, and helpful.  I really appreciated how great they were with Kate!

The Explorium truly is a little gem in the area.  It's a nice place to learn more about the local ocean life.  It was also a fun way to conclude our letter O fun!

Bubble Wrap Painting and Shaving Cream Marbling - Reading Mural

Last summer, we made a floral reading mural to keep track of the books we read over the summer.  Every time we read a book, we would add a petal or leaf to the mural with the title of the book written on each petal or leaf.  We also added butterflies and a sun.  It was a very popular activity with C and R, plus it kept them writing (they wrote the titles) and reading all summer.

Creating a reading mural is on our Summer Bucket List again this year, but we didn't get to it until this week, so unfortunately, it won't have all of our summer reading titles on it.  Oh well, better late than never!

To create the background for our reading mural, I cut some waves out of poster board.  I put some blobs of blue, green, and purple poster paint on the surface and R painted the waves.

C wasn't in the mood to paint, so R did the whole thing.

Once she was done painting, we placed bubble wrap on top of the wet paint and she pushed on and stepped on the bubble wrap to create a bubble effect in the ocean waves.

I cut some fish shapes out of white card stock.  Then we decorated the fish using the shaving cream marbling technique.

I began by giving C and R a tray with shaving cream and a few squirts of acrylic paint.

They used popsicle sticks to swirl the paint (don't over-mix - you want the colors to maintain their individual identities!).

Once they were done swirling, they took the card stock fish shapes and pressed them in the mixture, then pulled them out and put them aside for a few minutes.

We typically wait at least ten minutes to let the color set, and then use a popsicle stick to scrape off the extra shaving cream.  I have posted this technique many times; it's always a favorite around here and the results are so pretty!  Sometimes we use food coloring instead of paint; both work wonderfully.

Each fish will represent one book read.  We will continue adding fish until our ocean is full.  Here is a sneak peek with just a few of the fish on the ocean waves background (before any book titles are written on the fish):

I love the contrasting colors!

You may have noticed that this reading mural is tiny compared to the one we made last year.  Well, my due date is five weeks away and I thought it was best to not be too ambitious with getting every book read on the mural.  If need be, we can always expand with more poster board waves and fish that may or may not be marbled!

If you want to see more marbling, check out the gorgeous fall leaves made by Little Wonders' Days by clicking here!