Our preschool theme for this month is Ocean Commotion, the kids have been having a great time learning about different Ocean themed topics. I have learned that Ethan knows a lot about ocean animals, he has been able to tell Gabe, and me many different facts about our ocean topics that I had no clue about.
Today I am going to share some of the fun things we have done while learning about octopus, whales, and sharks this month.
Our schedule has been pretty mixed up the last couple weeks since Ethan has had many different medical appointments and procedures. This past week was even crazier due to the fact that Ethan had his first of a few surgeries planned for the next few months. Because of this there have been a few times that we have put a few days of school together in 1 day, we will do some of the activities on Friday that didn’t get done during the week, or Ethan will only sit with us for a short portion of time while we do school.
Octopus
One of the crafts the boys made was an octopus, they started by coloring their papers and then added their google eyes on.
Then they added stickers for the suction tentacles on the octopus. It was great fine motor practice!
Next came cutting the tentacles apart.
Once they were done with that, they rolled up their octopus and stapled them together.
And finally added a string to them.
Ethan was intent on adding “ink” to each of the tentacles of the octopus!
Whale
On our whale day the boys enjoyed doing blow art whale’s.
Ethan managed to accidentally put the wrong side of the straw in his mouth and ended up with blue lips lol 😀 !
By the end Ethan decided he wanted every square inch of his whale covered in paint, so he decided to just get a paint brush out instead.
Once the whales were dry, we added the sticker eye and the straw with blue tissue paper to the blow hole. It looks great, and looks just like the whale is blowing water out of his blow hole!
Both of the boys added the whale page to their little journals, and added sentences about a whale to the opposite page after tracing the W’s and lines at the bottom of the page.
The boys really loved this game we played while learning about whales holding their breath. They all had competitions to see who could hold their breath the longest.
Gabe decided to become the announcer with the horn he made at Sunday school.
Since one of the big boys wanted to join in the fun we ended up having quite a few that were off of the charts, so they just added them to the top.Â
The boys couldn’t believe just how big one of the smaller whales were. It took up almost our entire living room. They got pretty creative during this and tried stretching out as far as they possibly could to see if they could be as long as the whale, but just couldn’t make it.
This months I can Read book is called “What Am I” Gabe loves these books and is so proud that he will read the books each month to as many people in the house as will listen to him  😉 ! It is really amazing how quickly he is picking up on the sight words in the book.
Sharks
The boys loved this shark game that is a printable found on the Mother Goose Time Website, available with your monthly purchase. We rolled the dice and added that many chocolate chips for the teeth to the shark. Once they had all their chocolate chip teeth, we rolled the dice and took that many away and of course I let the boys eat them.
It sure was a delicious way to practice addition and subtraction ocean style!
We also made story props.
We watched a couple documentaries about coral reefs, and ocean animals. There are many different ones available on Netflix and Amazon Prime videos for FREE that everyone has enjoyed watching together.
Looking for some other ocean ideas? We have shared MANY fun ocean ideas previously on the blog, including a beach cake, sensory ideas, Montessori learning ideas, and lots more. Stop over and check some of the resources out!
Disclaimer: As a Mother Goose Time blog ambassador we are provided with curriculum each month and share how our family uses it, along with sharing about different monthly prompts. I am not compensated in any other way, and all opinions are those of my children or myself. Read my FULL disclosure policy for more information!
[…] few weeks exploring different topics about the Ocean with our Mother Goose Time Curriculum. I have already shared some of the big ocean animal fun ideas that we have done, today I am going to share about the small animals we have learned […]