Funner School ~ Ocean Week: Seashells & Sea Creatures Part 2

You can find Part 1 here,

where we explored shells, did a starfish craft,

used more ocean printable activities & played a magnetic fishing game

Seashells & Sea Creatures Day

Part 2

We read "Baby Turtle's Tale," by Ellen J. Mcguinness.

This book has fun changing pictures, and tells the story of a baby sea turtle,

hatching on the beach, and then making his solitary way through the ocean 

to be reunited with his family in a coral reef.  There are two pages 

of sea turtle facts at the end, which are great for discussion.

We watched A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures

and did some sea turtle coloring pages printed off the web.

We read "Mr. Seahorse," by Eric Carle,

and talked about how animals use camouflage - the transparent overlay

illustrations on every other page spread are fascinating for kids!

We also talked about how it was all the Daddy sea creatures that 

were responsible for caring for the eggs and babies in the story.

Then we did a really fun shaving cream painting activity from 

I Heart Crafty Things.  That blog is fab for Story Time Crafts!  Love it.

We grabbed some Dollar Tree cans of white shaving cream.

Then each child got to squirt it out all over a cookie sheet.

It didn't empty the can, but they were too stoked to take turns and at $1/can

we just went for each having their own.  We have leftovers to do it again sometime.

The second most fun part for them was spreading it out with their hands.

Then we rinsed off and got out the paint, which we squirted randomly on top.

Once the color is added, you gently swirl with a plastic knife.

We used the printable seahorse from the I Heart Crafty Things post.

I printed the template on white cardstock for each child.

Then we placed it gently upside down on top of the painty shaving cream.

We tapped and patted it on the backside, then slowly peeled it up.

It looked like the left side photo below...

then after about 10 minutes, you carefully scrape the shaving cream off.

What's left behind is just the swirled paint!  It's incredible!

Once that dried completely, the kids cut them out.

We punched holes for the hair, and instead of tying yarn on, we

poked half-pieces of pipe cleaner through the holes and twisted them.

We made some curly and some straight.  It worked great!

We also glued on a google eye.  These were really fun to make : )

We also made fantastic watercolor paintings of jellyfish.

I had pinned this on Craft, Interrupted's Busy Kids pinterest board.

You can see a great video of how to do this painting method 

here @ His Mercy is New.

You have the kids paint watery puddles of watercolor paint,

and then they hold their paper up and tap tap it to make the jellyfish tentacles

dribble down the page.  You make more by adding big drops of watery paint,

and/or painting on extra tentacles after you do the puddle/tap.

My kids loooooved this!  We added speckles/splatters for bubbles, too.

When these dried, our friend chose to outline hers with crayon.

Then we added some white glitter to the jelly fish bodies.

These jellyfish paintings turned out so lovely!

We capped off Ocean Week with a fun and tasty snack

Graham Cracker Fish Treats

I've seen these called Fish TANKS, but we just made them as ocean scenes.

We used full size graham crackers, white icing & goldfish cookies.

I put some of the white icing in a ziplock bag with the corner cut off.

The rest I tinted with blue food coloring.  This they spread onto their cracker.

Then they stuck the little fish cookies on top, and made waves with the 

white icing by squeezing it like a pastry bag.

*phew*

I think that's it.

I told you we did a lot!

My survival plan for while the Hubs was on his week-long 

business trip was obviously to keep them as busy as possible ; )

If you missed any Ocean Week posts, here's a recap...

Hermit Crab Day

Our Big Blue Ocean Day

Shark Day

Submarine Day
Seashells & Sea Creatures Day - Part 1

Read about Funner School here,
and catch up on Funner School Past!
I'll be adding our Ocean Week links to it soon.

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