Ocean/Beach *Make a Beach At Your House * For Beach day we will be wearing summer clothes, and bringing swimsuits to "swim" in my incredibly huge bath tub. I may also get some Lei's from the local Party store and have a Pineapple and Canadian Bacon pizza for lunch. We plan to read books that have to do with the beach. *BEACH PARTY (You can play a day at the beach even if it's rainy outside!) Materials needed Towels Swimsuits Sunglasses Fruit Sand Shells Small wading pool *What to do 1. Have each child bring their own towel, swimsuit and sunglasses to school. 2. The children can help you cut up fruit to make a fruit salad. 3. Make separate areas for each of the following: sand with shells, pool with water, towels and picnic. 4. After changing into their swimsuits, the children spread out their towels. They may nor may not choose to wear their sunglasses. 5. Each child can choose between various activities that are available at the beach - looking for shells in the sand, taking a swim, resting on their towels or having a refreshing snack. * More to do Have the children use their imagination to each draw a picture of all the things they saw on their trip to the beach. ~Have kids wear summer clothes - swimsuits ~Have lunch on a blanket on the floor, picnic style! ~Read summer stories ~Color Paper plates yellow and make suns. ~Read this related book: A Day at the Beach by Mircea Vasiliu *UNDER THE SEA The children will discover what lives under the water. Materials needed Blue and green crayons Cheese grater Wax paper Iron Sea animal shapes Towel What to do 1. Cut out shapes of sea animals (fish, octopus, sea horse, crab, star fish, etc.) Peel paper off crayons. Heat iron away from children. Have two pieces of wax paper for each child. Place grater on top of one piece of wax paper. 2. Let the children rub the crayons on the grater. 3. Let the children add animal shapes to their picture. 4. Place another piece of wax paper on top of picture. 5. Put picture on top of towel. 6. The teacher can iron the wax paper together. Press lightly and the children can see steam and feel heat coming off of iron. Watch how the iron melts the crayons and it makes it seem like ocean water. 7. Hang in window when finished *Examine real ocean water If you are near a beach, visit or have someone bring in a bucket of ocean water to examine what's in it. *Walk with children this week on the ocean floor. See what it is like to sleep under water, watch rainbow fish swimming above your head, avoid a barracuda's sharp teeth, discover "super star" starfish, and delight in the spongey texture of a special school of fish -- all in the diving helmet you made yourself from a simple grocery sack. *Of course, ocean activities spark conversations about water and the creatures that live in it. Activities that can be enjoyed are simple water play, learning different types of bodies of water (oceans, lakes, ponds, etc.), testing the flexibility of our limbs during a crab-walk relay, talking like dolphins & whales, and making our own tuna fish sandwiches. *Use this time to introduce opposite-type of concepts such as wet/dry. We used a book called *Wet or Dry*... it was a collection of photos, and each child took turns answering the question, "Wet or dry?" There are many wonderful books that will emphasize fun with ocean life at the library... hurry there and check out a bunch! *DIVING HELMETS An idea from the archives at MOMS Online - see more details/photos there! SUPPLIES: Glue (Elmers or similar) Brown Grocery Sack Construction Paper Fish Cutouts Misc. tissue paper Crayons/Markers Fish Stencils *WHALE WATER SCOOP MATERIALS Clean plastic gallon milk jug Permanent marker Scissors Turn the gallon jug onto its side so that the handle is at the top. With the marker, draw a mouth shape on the base of the jug and extending partway up the sides, as shown. Cut along the lines with scissors, creating a widemouthed scoop (a parent's job). Using the marker, outline the edge of the mouth and add eyes and a blowhole. *Play Fish Tank Take a card board box open on one side and have the children paint the inside blue and then give each child a precut fish (or have them design their own) have the children decorate the fish with glitter, sequins, feathers, whatever is on hand. Then suspend the fish with fishing wire from the fish tank. It will look like the fish are swimming. Allow the children to add things to the tank like rocks, plants etc. *To make our own aquarium, we covered our classroom windows with blue paper and the kids decorated the 'water' with fish and other sea life. *When we studied sharks, we created underwater shark scenes with tempera paint and added Kindergarten writing (whatever they could write at their level) telling about their picture. *Here's a great center game that we played after studying whales. We discussed that whales have poor eyesight, but they can find food on their own. (Just as we use our sense of hearing to tell where things are, whales use their sense of hearing to do the same.) Work with a partner and imagine that you are a whale. Partner A puts on a blindfold or covers his/her eyes. Partner B taps on the table in 3 different places. After each tap, Partner A points to the direction where he/she thinks the tap came from. Partner B records his/her answers by drawing a 'Good Job' whale if the tap is located or a 'Lost Whale' if the tap was not located. Then the partners trade places and they repeat the game. My students loved playing this while I covered my eyes. They liked trying to 'stump' me!! (And they did a few times!!) *This activity is a great cumulative activity for the unit. It's a cognitive guessing game (sort of like 20 questions). A picture of a sea animal is taped to the back of a student one at a time. Then they turn around so that everyone else knew what sea animal they were. The child was then required to ask yes or no questions to try and determine what sea animal they were (eg. Am I a mammal? A Fish? Bigger than a Kindergartner?). The children had a lot of fun with this game and I was able to see that they understood the unit. * Fingerpaint with green, blue tinted shaving cream, offering various"combs" to drag through and make ripples. We'll do this on smooth trays, and take a print when they've finished playing and experimenting. (we are mostly offering this becasue it's occurred to us that we haven't had shaving cream for a LONG time - Another paint idea I love is watery Jazz Gloss Tempera - blue, green and silver) * Stamp schools of fish - potato stamps, commercial * Arrange grass, ferns etc, along with fish stickers on one sheet of wax paper, sprinkle crayon shavings here and there - emphasize shades of blue, but all colors look okay), and iron. * Watercolor blue, silver, green over a crayoned fish. * Cornstarch clay sea stars, paint with sandy pastel paint and make into necklaces. We're thinking of bending a regular star cookie cutter to a sea star shape. Sea stars (starfish, to some) feature in the book Ibis. * We also do magnet fishing, and I just brought our old raft down to school for sitting in. * Sing baby Beluga, and dance. *The younger class made fish bowls. We used two white paper plates. You cut the center out of one plate and the children colored/painted the whole paper plate with blue for the ocean. I had cut out some sea creatures, seahorses, sharks, fish, octopuses, and even some whales.The children glued their sea creatures to the blue background.The rim(of the one you cut the center out of) was wrapped with blue saran wrap and then stapled to the ocean scene. They could look through the saran wrap and see what was inside their little aquarium. *We did a seahorse for the letter S. The children glued on one googley eye and covered the seahorse with glue. They then sprinkled sand over the seahorse. * Magnetic fishing of course. If you cut felt fish out so they're models of the real thing, You can narrate as the kids catch them. ie., you caught a squid, you caught a dog fish shark and a spiny sea urchin. The kids will quickly learn the names of the sealife in your area. * Cut fish out of meat trays and kids paint and make prints. They look like fish with scales because of the pattern on the meat trays. * You can print with real fish and squid and stuff by painting on them and then printing. This works best with pieces of sheet material or other cloth for the printing. It really looks cool if you let the kids paint or dye the cloth with a pale blue and green liquid water color wash the day before. Then use black and silver or other dark color to paint the fish. * Post pictures of real sea life near the art table. Provide oil pastels and liquid water color for an ocean wash, (green and blue and red looks really nice). The children can paint a resist sea picture. * Underwater sea collage - Provide sea shells, sponge pieces, sand, colored cellophane pieces for coral and or pieces of real coral, little fish cut from shiny paper, pieces of sand dollars, etc. (anything that comes from the sea), glue, matboard, and oil pastels. * Make outlines of sea life on poster board with slick paint or colored glue. When the glue is dry, children can make crayon rubbings of the sealife. *Swimming Fish Snack 8oz. softened cream cheese blue food coloring 1 bow rectangular-shaped crackers 2 cups small fish shaped crackers Add a few drops of blue food coloring to the cream cheese and stir. For each serving, spread cream cheese on a large, rectanglar cracker. Place a few fish-shaped crackers on top of the cream cheese. *Shell Fun Have on hand a wide variety of shells. Let the children sort the shells into group by kind, size, texture, etc. Have them count the nujber of shells in each group. Continue by asking the children to find the smallest and largest shell. Then have take turns balancing the shells in each hand to see which is heaviest and which is lightest. *Floating and Sinking Chart Collect items that float in water and items that do not. On a piece of paper, draw three columns. Title the first column "Float?" and list the names of the items under the title. Write "Yes" and "No" at the top of the second and third columns. Let the children place each item in a tub of water and record whether or not it floats by making a check mark in the appropriate column on the chart. Count together the number of check mark in each column and discuss with the children the results lf theif experiment. *Last year we ended our summer time unit with a beach party. The children came dressed in beach attire, made and wore leis, listened to Reggae music,danced the macarena, played volley ball, and for snack they drank virgin pina coladas and had various tropical fruits. *Flying Fish Socks: Get a large box. Paint the box blue to represent the ocean. Ask parents to send in any unmatched socks they do not want. Have the children use permanent markers to decorate the socks to resemble fish. Once the fish have been decorated, fill the socks partially with handfuls of dried beans, then secure the ends with rubber bands. Let the children take turns tossing the flying fish into the box. *Colored Sand and Salt Shakers: Gather several salt shakers and fill each witha mixture of equal parts of clean sand and powdered tempera paint. Set the salt shakers, along with construction paper and glue, on a table. Allow the kids to use the glue to make ocean animal designs on their papers and then cover them with different salt shaker mixtures. *Handprint Ocean Animals: Allow each student to presshis hand in tempera paint and then carefully press it on a piece of paper. when the kid's paper is dry have him make an ocean animal using the handprint. They could make fish, octopuses, crabs, etc. Create an ocean scene using the handprints. *Tissue Paper Fish: Gather a package of paper plates, tissue paper, scissors and glue. Pre-mark one paper plate for each child with a pie-shaped wedge (for the tail). Instruct each child to cut along the lines to remove the wedge. Next, staple the pointed side of teh wedge to the opposite end of the plate to form the tail. Give each child several pieces of colored tissue paper and have him tear them into pieces about 1"X1". Have each decorate the fish by gluing the pieces on. You could also use colored cellophane paper. This fish looks like the Rainbow Fish. *Paper Plate Jellyfish: Gather a package of paper plates, glue, streamers and scissors. Cut each plate in half. Give each child 1/2 of the plate. Cut a long strip of crepe paper and mark into sixteen 6" sections. Instruct the kids to cut the crepe paper on the marks and then glue these pieces onto the bottom edge to look like tentacles. Use crayons to make a face on the plate. *Paper Plate Oysters: Gather a paper plate and a cotton ball for each child. Also you will need gray and pink paints and glue. The kids should fold the plates in half and paint the insides of the "oyster" pink. When the pink is dried they should paint the outside of the plate gray. To complete they can glue the "pearl" into the the center of the oyster. *See-Through Ocean Scene: Have the children draw on a piece of newsprint paper an ocean animal scene with crayons. When finished use a cotton ball with baby oil and cover the paper with the oil. Allow the picture to dry for several days and the end result will be a bright transparent ocean scene. *Underwater Scene: Have the child draw on a piece of white construction paper an underwater ocean scene with crayons. Press HARD! When finished they are to cover the paper with blue watercolor paint to make a bright underwater scene. * Beach Color rock salt by soaking in alcohol and food coloring. I made blue, green, and brown. Children make a collage using blue or green for the ocean, brown for the sand and some uncolored rock salt for shells. My class loved doing this because the rock salt looks like gem stones. *Wave Jars Set out baby food jars, vegetable oil, water and food coloring. Let each of the children fill one of the baby food jars halfway with water and add two or three drops of food coloring. Fill each child's jar to the top with the oil. Screw the lid on tightly. If necessary, seal the lid with hot glue and allow it to cool. Let the children shake their wave jars back and forth to create waves. * Read "The Rainbow Fish" and provide sea life stencils, scissors, pens, glue and holographic paper scales, a coat hanger, hole punch and string. Kids can make a rainbow fish mobile. *If you have an aquarium or fish bowl with gold fish, move it near or on the art table and ask kids to look closely at the fishes parts. Discuss, fins, gills, etc. Then provide pens for kids to draw. *Provide pens and sea life stamps for drawings and stories of underwater worlds. *Do some boat building and sink and float activities. Materials for boats can include, foil, milk cartons, wood, model magic, styrofoam. It's also fun to try to build boats from duplos and or legos, then try to sink the boats with pennies, people, keys, animals, etc. *Read McElligot's Pool a very creative book about made up fish, and ask kids to create different fish puppets or drawings and name their fish. A pool shaped piece of paper and oil pastels with a blue liquid water-color wash is fun with this story. *Ocean theme wall hangings You will need: 6 in white paper plates, aquarium gravel (we like blue best) I find this in pet stores or stores like KMart, shells, glue, blue glitter (optional), confetti fish The children can decorate the rim of the paper plate with crayons, markers, ect. They come up with some really interesting color patterns! Next let the children drizzle lots of white glue in the center of the decorated plate. Working in a box, they can sprinkle on aquarium gravel. Next, using more glue, children can add shells, blue glitter, confetti sharks etc. Punch a hole in the edge, add a blue string and hang when dry. *Paper plate fish: Use a regular size paper plate and cut a triangle out of it as if you were cutting out a piece of pie. Staple the pointed end of the pie to the opposite side of the place where you cut out. This way the plate has an opening for the fishes mouth and on the opposite side is the fishes tail. Let the children paint, color,glitter, whatever they want to decorate the fish. Don't forget to tell them to add an eye - this brings character to the fish! * Starfish: Cut out the shape of a starfish on a piece of tan construction paper. Let the children paint the starfish with glue and sprinkle cornmeal over the glue. You could also glue cheerios on the bottom for the starfishes feet. * Octopus: This one is a little hard. Draw a picture of an octopus and let the children cut it out. An octopus can be drawn by having a "blob" for a head and legs coming out of it. Have the children glue the octopus to a piece of paper and add sealife drawing around it like fish, seahorses, starfish, sharks, or plants. *idea for an octopus..make a windsock. Let the children decorate the bottom half of a blue or green piece of paper, the help them roll it and glue it and cut the "tentacles" about halfway up the sheet. We glue on squiggly eyes but you could draw them before, then we hang them with string. *Mural...paint butcher paper blue, let the kids tear colored construction paper to be the seaweed and coral and glue it on, then you can glue on your paper plate fish and other art projects or else draw fish directly on. for added effect you could cover with blue or clean cellophane when done. * another idea for sealife is to make aquariums from shoe boxes. Make the background by having the kids glue layers of tissue paper scraps (in blue and green shades) to the inside of the box. The ocean floor can be done by gluing down a piece of sand paper. then they can put in rocks and shells and springs of silk greenery to look like kelp and sea weed. A variety of sea life can be made with chenille wire, pompons, wiggle eyes and felt. ~ Here are some of my favorites: 1. Octopus-- Take a section of panty hose (toe preferably), stuff it with paper towel and secure at the bottom with a rubber band. Twist together 4 chenile stems (so ther are 8 legs) and wrap them around the bottom. Drw on eyes and a happy smile. Glue into aquarium. 2. Sea Horse-- Cut one section of a bumpy chenille, bend into an "S", glue on eyes, add a parallelogram shaped piece of felt for the fin on back. 3. Fish-- Cut these out of fun foam or styrofoam trays, add eyes and a smile. 4. Crabs (a must - we're from Maryland!)-- one red pompon, eight peices of red chenile stem for 3 legs and 1 swimmer on each side, 1 bumpy chenille section (cut in half) for the claws, wiggle eyes. Cut a crab shell-shaped felt piece for the shell. 5. Seastar (the politically correct version of Starfish!)-- Just bend a chenille stem into a star-shape. Some of these may be involved for little fingers so you may need to simplify them. My kids have these aquariums that they made at VBS 2 years ago! The boxes are easy to mount on the wall with just two push pins through the back. My kids keep all there little critters that they collect in them. *Fill your sensory table with blue water, using meat trays, cut out fish and other sealife shapes and cover them with foil. You can color them with permanent marker. Add some sea shells too. Attach a paper clip and fish for them with magnetic fishing poles. *CRAB Cut out a crab shape and let the children spread glue over it and add sand to give it texture. Can also do this with a starfish shape or seahorse shape. *Create beach souvenirs to take home You will need: box of plaster of Paris empty coffee can or plastic ice cream pail paint stirring sticks paper cup paper clips Bring along a carton of plaster of Paris, a paper cup. and a coffee can the next time you go to the beach, and come home with a unique piece of art. Scoop out a design at least 2" deep in the wet sand. (Be sure the tide won't be coming in soon!) Connecting areas should also be 2" wide, to keep your project from breaking. This will be your mold. Decorate it with natural objects you collect on the beach. When your mold is complete, mix the Plaster of Paris. Pour one or two cups of lake, ocean, gulf, or sea water into the coffee can or pail. Add the powdered plaster and stir. The mixture should be smooth and thick (but pourable). Do not over stir, however, as this causes the mixture to set up too quickly and weakens the final product. Immediately pour the mixture into your sand mold, spreading it evenly to all areas with a stick, if necessary, To make a hanger for your project, poke a paper clip halfway into the plaster at the center top. If the project is large, you may wish to position two paper clips evenly spaced from each side. Allow the plaster to harden (1 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on the size of the project), and then carefully remove the plaster souvenir from the sand. Dispose of left over plaster and coffee can properly. Take a picture of your pleased kids holding their creations before you transport them home. *SAND SCULPTURES 2 CUPS SAND 1CUP CORNSTARCH 1 CUP WATER Mix sand and cornstrarch in saucepan. stir in water. Heat mixture, while stirring. When thick, remove from heat and cool. *Crabs Fingerpainting - On paper dribble some corn syrup and then sprinkle on some red and yellow powder tempera paints. Let the children fingerpaint. It will be sticky but they love it. Allow the papers to dry a day or two. The surface is really similar to a crab's shell. I have crab tracers of different sizes and trace them onto the paintings. Have the kids cut them out. *Ocean Blue Vanilla Milkshakes Ingredients (for each milkshake) 3/4 c vanilla ice cream blue food coloring 1/4 c 2% milk Materials: ice cream scoop tall plastic container for mixing big spoon small, clear, drinking glasses drinking straws (this would be a good time to use fishy straws) For each milkshake, place 2 or 3 scoops of vanilla ice cream in you tall plastic container. Let the ice cream sit in your plastic container for about 10 minutes at room temp. Next, have the children put 1 or 2 drops of blue food coloring into the ice cream and then pour in about one quarter cup of milk. Have the kids use a big spoon to gently stir all of the ingredients together. You may need to add a little more ice cream or a bit more milk, depending on the consistency of your milkshake. Pour your milkshake into a small, clear, drinking glass.