Toddler Preschool Beach Ocean Theme Ideas -4

Sock Whales.  This idea is really my friend C's.  She told me about a week or so ago and I needed to add it to our week.

I used polyfill, 1 sheet of sparkle felt, buttons, a sharpie, yarn, socks from the dollar store ... 3 pairs for 1 dollar, hot glue too.

 Have the kids stuff the socks.

 Like really really stuff them.  It takes about 7 minutes of laughing and stuffing.

It should look like this...

The the tail into a knot and then add eyes and cut felt into fin shapes and glue on the sides. Then add the smile with the sharpie.  After that have the kids tie knots, this was hard for them so they cut the yarn into desired lengths and I tied the knot.

Snip the top of the whale and then hot glue the yarn inside.  I added a felt layer to the top (not pictured) just to secure the blow hole water in place.

 Here they are.  We read a few books about whales and then played "slide the whale across the wood floor"
It was like Whale Hockey...2 activities in one! Haha

Toddler Preschool Beach Ocean Theme Ideas -3

Ocean Animal Snack!

I did Goldfish, Gummy Octopuses that I found at Sunflower Market, Nemo Fruit Snacks.

Everyone liked it...

The second thing we did ...on day 2

Starfish crackers, Fish crackers, Pretzel "fishing rods", Sprinkles "plankton", 

Peanut Butter Bait, M and M "clams"

This was a hit too!

Happ Snacking!

Toddler Preschool Beach Ocean Theme Ideas -2

Land vs. Sea - Sensory Project!

I took 10 graham crackers (cinnamon) and crushed them. This is the sand.

put it in a pie pan and in another pie pan add water.
Get some sea and land creatures and have the kids decide what goes where...

This was EVERYONEs favorite activity...

Back and forth back and forth. 

This was lots of great fun!

I ended up doing it both days because as you can see - it was a hit!

Toddler Preschool Beach Ocean Theme Ideas -1

It my turn in the rotation for Tot School so here are 6 ideas.

Day One!

Sand Dollar Discovery

I made lab sheets, for them to document what they saw.  If you want a copy email me or leave a comment with your email address.

I had a sand dollar from when we went to California last time and pulled out my kid sized Magnifying Glass.

We talked about what a Sand Dollar is:


The sand dollar is a marine invertebrate, a living animal, closely related to the starfish, sea lily, the sea cucumber and the sea urchin. Sand dollars come from the Echinoids class, which means "spiny skinned creature."
Sand Dollar, invertebrate having a flat, circular outer shell. The common sand dollar of the northeastern United States is found on sandy bottoms in comparatively shallow water.
The size of the adult shell is about 8 cm (or 3 inches) in diameter on the average and has many small perforations that form a symmetrical petal-like design. You can find larger ones, and tiny little baby ones as well as any size in between.
The entire shell is penetrated by many small, brown spines that give the shell a velvety appearance and enable the animal to move about.
By the time a sand dollar washes up on a beach, it is usually no longer living, and only its shell remains.
Sand dollars obtain food by using their spines and tube feet to engulf sand from which they extract minute plants and animals.
Sand dollars belong to a phylum (family) of marine animals known as echinoderms, which inhabit all the world's oceans and can live in both the shallow and deep-ocean floor.
Scientific classification: Sand dollars belong to the order Clypeasteroida of the class Echinoidea. The common sand dollar of the northeastern United States is classified as Echinarachnius parma.
I believe the Western Sand Dollar to differ from the "Keyhole Sand Dollar" found on the Eastern shores. It tends to not have the five "keyholes" in the shell, and is round, rathers than having those decorative little indentations around the edges.
Though each one has it's own beauty.
*

So it was time to DISCOVER!!!

The 2 year old was TOTALLY into this!

We talked about the texture and shape and color...

Everyone had different answers.

They thought it was neat that it used to be living.

They also compared the veins on the back to the lines on our hand.

This took up a lot of time.  They liked that we were doing "Science"