Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Sea Animals Day

Our latest theme day combined two favorites around here: animals and water (more specifically kiddie pools). We had the perfect day for playing outdoors, swimming with sea creatures, and doing a couple of sea animals paintings.



One little pool held water beads with whales and sharks, the middle was filled with water and Finding Dory squirters, and the littlest pool had a grow alligator in it (although it didn't grow much because the kids mostly had it out of the water chasing each other with it).





We even broke out the Finding Dory wash cloths for playing in the pools!

The kids played two games: see how many whales and/or sharks they could catch in the net in a minute (while the other kids splashed the water, moving the animals they were trying to catch) and shark tag (I failed to get pictures of that one).


 The art projects for the day:


Painted wooden shapes (dolphins and crabs)


 The younger kids (ages 1-4) played with the sea creatures. They did color sorting, sorting by animal, counting, and patterning. Even the older kids (ages 5-8) enjoyed patterning and guessing the different animals. They also used the sea creatures for painting/stamping on construction paper.


We even read a couple of sea animal books: Dolphins and a National Geographic Ocean Animals.

The pools kept the big kids entertained all day long (and pretending that the blow up fish was really a whale that they were riding on through the ocean). I love theme days that ignite creative play on their own and interest in learning about the theme of the day.