ABC and 123: A Learning Collaborative: Ocean Themed Activities

Friday, July 31, 2009

Ocean Themed Activities

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This was a poplular theme with ABC's community! Thank you to everyone who sent in their submissions! We appreciate them and they make putting together quality posts easier for us too. We'd love to fill more posts completely with reader submissions, so keep them coming!

Cindy submitted a link to the following ocean themed activities.
Beach Ocean Theme, Preschool Activities:
1. Slippery Fish Flannel Board Activity with templates and words
2. Secret Seahorse Memory Game can be used with Secret Seahorse book


3. ABC Fishing Game


4. Counting Fish Activity with templates


5. What's Different? Activity

Meninheira made a mobile with cereal boxes. It is a great sun (43 cm), has its rays hanging from an umbrella, a butterfly, a float for the beach, an ice cream and a sandcastle. Of rays of hanging up signs with the word summer in English, Spanish and Galician lenguague.


She also put together an ocean in a bottle as part of a study on the sea.


Check out her site for a video explanation of an ocean themed lap book.


Vanessa submitted ocean activities for you to try with your little explorers:

Beach Bucket Roll 'N Stamp Game

Materials needed: Print the Beach Bucket Roll "N Stamp Game mat from: http://www.pre-kpages.com/ocean.htmlDo-A-Dot markers or sea shells, one die (large foam die are best so they can't be swallowed by younger siblings or pets).

Child rolls the die and places a sea shell on a corresponding number on their mat OR stamps the bucket with a Do-A-Dot marker. This activity promotes number recognition, number sense, and one-to-one correspondence.

Fish Bowl One-to-One Game

Materials needed: Print the Fish Bowl game mat from: http://www.pre-kpages.com/ocean.html goldfish crackers, one die (large foam die are best so they cannot be swallowed by younger siblings or pets)

Child rolls the die and places one goldfish on a fish bowl for each corresponding dot on the die. For example, if the child rolls a 4 then he or she would place 4 fish on their mat. This activity promotes one-to-correspondence.

See picture here: http://www.pre-kpages.com/images/math_ocean121.jpg

Fish in the Ocean Game
Materials needed: One egg carton, blue paint, Sharpie marker, goldfish crackers

Cut off the top of the egg carton and paint the inside of the carton blue. When the paint is dry, use the Sharpie marker to write one number in the bottom of each egg space. The child will identify the number and place the corresponding number of goldfish crackers in each space.

You will love the cute castles Anne from Teaching Two made with her little ones. What a clever use for toliet paper tubes.

They also collaged small pieces of torn paper to make colorful seahorses.

Arts and Crofts submitted a link to several ocean themed activities. The World is an Oyster has an adorable oyster craft accompanied by math and language arts follow up activities!

Princes with a Half Price Tiara has put an egg carton to good use making this little sea crab creations.


She also submitted a giant jellyfish and a whale of a bag!

KizClub has a printable underwater counting & coloring page. They also have an sea creature scissor practice activity.


Carissa at 1+1+1=1 has idea for an ocean themed tot book.

Alexa at Mind Games shared the following three links for beachy activities:

Last year when we came home from our trip to the lake, we brought containers of sand/rocks/water from the lake's edge for our friends to explore. These are our favorite sand molds, ever! The pyramid, the colosseum, and more.

We like to make sand paintings by painting with white glue and then shaking sand over the top.



Her Cup Overfloweth posted a fun sea & sand scape snack.

The following ideas have been submitted by Denise. Put them together to build a fun beach unit.

Title: I Went Swimming Poem Chart
Objective: develop concepts of print

Title: Fish Pattern Blocks
Objective: identify shapes; combine shapes to create a picture

Title: Fish Song Chart
Objective: develop concepts of print; read sight words

Title: Ocean Writing Station
Objective: writing

Title: Finding Nemos
Objective: matching numbers to sets of objects

Set up your own beach in the playroom. Check out the Dairy Queen's version!

Hadley also shares several beach themed toddler tub activities. This link explains the tubs in more detail.


The Bookworm's Booklist has put together a great beach themed book list.


We got a last minute submission from The Pink and Green Mama with her fun Ocean in the Bag craft, this looks like a lot of fun!

Get a free summer themed scrapbook and journaling pages for your kids to color, add photos, and write about their summer from crafts store Michael's, The Knack. Just print out and complete.

6 comments:

  1. Great ideas! It is always so much fun to see how creative people are!

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  2. What a beautiful and inspired activities!!

    I hope you can understand whith the translator of course :) my blog and our ideas.

    Hugs from Spain :)

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  3. tons of activities for this one! Thanks for putting them all in one place!

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  4. Great collection of activities today!

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  5. Great timing! We are hoping to do a week of beach activities next week. Lots of great new ideas! I will be linking, if that's OK! :)

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  6. I LOVE everyone of these! Thanks for the tips. Sorry I haven't been following blogs lately. Summer time is crazy. I'm trying to catch up while the kids are at church camp right now!

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