Homeschool Preschool: Oceans Theme

On this post you will find a collection of links to resources that I used for our first week of homeschool preschool/tot-school. I also included a short description of the activities and any modifications that I may have made. The theme for our first week was Oceans. I hope this will be helpful to you!

Devotional/Bible:

A couple of christmases ago, we received this great devotional book as a gift. It has 180 devotions and worship activities for preschoolers.  The devotional stories cover a variety of topics that are great conversations starters and some of them include activities that are educational and interactive. 

When I was planing for this week, I read through all of the titles and picked five stories that best fit into our theme. Here are the five that I picked:

Monday: #133 Fish Need Water; I Need Air

Tuesday:#14 Whale's Spouts

Wednesday: #62 Spouting Whales

Thursday: #83 Sea Animals

Friday: #36 Jellyfish

You can find this book to purchase on this link here. 

This is what we use at the beginning of everyday.

Language Arts Activities (Phonetic Awareness, Listening Comprehension, and Oral Language):

Books:

Here is a list of books that we either have or borrowed from the library for this week:

1. Once Upon a Tide by Tony Mitton

2. Big Al by Andrew Clements Yoshi

3. Grasper by Paul Owen Lewis

4. A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle 

Other books I would like to have used but we unavailable at the library:

1. Ten Little Fish

2. Rainbow Fish

3. Mr. Seahorse

I try to read to them at least 20 minutes everyday but I will often go for as long as they are interested. I leave these books on the shelf so they can have easy access to them at any time. I often find them looking at the pictures and "reading" the stories out loud to themselves. 

Name Kits:

One of my goals for my preschooler this year is that he will be able to recognize his name in writing. So every morning I try to do some little activity with his name. 

I got the idea for name kits from Fun-A-Day. 

So here is what we did:

The first and most important item on the kit is a laminated printed copy of their names with big bold letters. They can use this for reference, trace with their fingers, or a dry-erase marker.

The link above suggests that you can print a second copy of the name and cut up the letters so the kids can rearrange and put their names back together like a puzzle. I think it is a great idea but I already had one similar to that that I made with clothespins so I skipped that one.

I also added cut up pieces of white paper that can fit on a cheap 4X6 photo album (the kind you can get at the dollar store). One piece of paper for each letter of their name. I also printed and cut up pictures that started with each of the letters of their names. On the first day, I wrote the capital and lower case letters with a marker on each page for them to see. Then, we found letter stickers corresponding to each letter, and last we picked from the pictures that I had cut up and glued it to each letter page. On the second day, they put the letters in order in the album. They also added a picture of themselves to the first page. Now they have a small name book on the shelf they can look at any time they like. I think this is a great way to introduce letters...even the one year-old now says A for Airplane when she looks at the her book.

Last, they picked out the letters of they names from a box where I keep all of our magnetic letters (that I found for $1 at target and Dollar Tree) and put together their names looking at the reference laminated version mentioned above on a cookie sheet (Also from Dollar Tree).

All of the above, except the book (which is on their book shelf) stays in a ziplock bag that is easily accessible. On the days we don't use the kit, I like using letter stickers so they can still practice by picking out the letters of their name to label whatever we are working on (found these stickers in the dollar section at Target or Dollar Tree)

Sight Word Shells: 

After reading a few articles and posts from education experts, I decided that instead of spending too much time talking about individual letters, that I would start introducing sight words and talking about the letters and sounds they make in that context. So I found a list of preschool/kindergarten sight words and spread them out through the weeks. For this week, the words are:

1. up

2. the

3. and

4. you

To introduce the words this week, I used the sight word shell idea that I found here.

When I first introduced the words, I spelled out the letters in each and had him help me when he recognized the letter.  Sometimes I also brought the words out of the box while I was reading to them and pointed out the same words in the books. 

Journal

I recently came across the journal idea for preschoolers and I was excited about it. I got a composition notebook for each kid and had them pick out letter stickers to label with their names on the first page (part of the name recognition goal). 

This week, I drew a circle on the page and wrote the word circle underneath and had them do whatever they wanted with crayons and colored pencils on the page. They really liked it!

Z1 (3yo) had this elaborate story going with his drawing where the circle was a parachute and it was being held by a boat and there was a ladder and everything. when he was finished drawing I wrote down his description.

Z2 (22mo) also had seemed to enjoy the drawing but was not very happy that I didn't let her draw in every page on the first day =D

This particular idea about the circle came from teaching2and3yearolds.com  However, I recently started a Pinterest board with Preschool journal ideas that you can check out for more suggestions. 

Sensory and fine motor skills:

I really like the idea of sensory bins. I love how they make my kids curious and excited about the things they find. This week we had two sensory bins, one with sand and one with water.

On the sand bin, I made some sand foam using shaving cream mixed with some sand from their sand box in a medium storage container I found at the dollar store. I hid different sea shells in there for them to find and gave them a couple of scoops to play with. We spent one day just exploring this bin, the next day we dug up the shells and washed them, then I set the shells out on a tray with a magnifying glass for them to explore some more, and on the last day we categorized them but matching them to pictures of shells and their names. This second part was also one of our science activities.

On the water bin, I added clear pebbles (from Dollar Tree), sea shells, blue water beads (Michael's), and blue food coloring (baking aisle), and some fish counters. The blue water hid the water beads well so it was quite a surprise for them to find the water beads in there. 

Here are a few links with a ton of ideas for ocean sensory bins

http://stayathomeeducator.com/ten-ocean-themed-preschool-activities/ (most of the ideas above came from here)
http://www.funathomewithkids.com/2014/07/15-ocean-sensory-play-ideas-for-kids.html
http://pagingfunmums.com/2014/10/30/sand-foam-two-ingredients-for-super-sensory-fun/ (sand foam idea came from here)

Fish in the Ice:
This one was super easy and kept the kids happy and exploring while I got lunch ready one of the days. All I did was stick some fish counters in a cupcake pan and fill with water so they froze into nice cupcake size ice cubes with fish inside. I gave the kids a bowl with water and they got some tools out from their play tool set (the hammers mostly) and went for it. The 22 mo threw hers in the water right away while the 3 year old hammered his fish out.

This idea came from here.

Gross Motor Skills:

Crab Walk: Here is an activity that is sure to get them moving and matches our theme =D Have them sit on the floor with their hands also on the floor behind their back. Then have them lift their bottom from the floor and move sideways. You can have them follow a path, do a race... (idea from here)

Action Songs:
My kids really enjoy action songs. A little while ago I found The Little Gym CD on Spotify and its been working very well for us. The songs are fun and exciting and, since they were made for gym classes at The Little Gym facilities, they tell you exactly what to do. My kids favorite is one entitled "Run in a Circle." Not that I ever have to tell my kids to run or jump but they love it that we do it together. This week I actually found a song on that CD that goes with our theme and is called "Wicky Wacky Looney Hula." I includes the  crab walk and everything...they loved it!


Geography:

Ocean Naming Song:
To start our week we talked about what oceans where and looked in the globe at their location. Then, we I started to teach them this easy song with the names of the oceans. I like to repeat the song throughout the day especially when they are working on some quiet activity like exploring the sensory bins or looking at shells. The 3yo has memorized the song and the 22mo can repeat most of it.


Science:

Wave Bottle: 
Water + oil + blue food coloring + a couple of fish counters in a clear plastic bottle. After we made it together I left it out in a place that is easily accessible to them so that they can pick it up and look at it whenever they want. Z1 had lots of questions about what he was looking yet, why they didn't mix, and how they separated....curious little guy. link here

Sea Shell Exploration:
A few months ago a good friend of our family gave us a box of sea shells. So we had plenty of different kids of see shell to look at and explore. (see how in the sensory bin section). We also took a trip to the beach and collected some ourselves.

I also printed out a set of seashell nomenclature cards to help them sort the shells. 

Field Trip to the Sea Turtle Rescue Center at South Padre Island: We are blessed to leave very close to the ocean. To add to out study we were able to go visit the Sea Turtle Rescue Center at South Padre Island.

Art:

Handprint Crabs: 
Easy and Fun... link here.

Plus a couple of art activities that go along with the devotional book (see above)

Math:

Fishing game: I got a cartoon fish template from google images and copy and pasted it 10X in a power point slide (2/page). Then I added circles to each from 1 to 10. After that, I printed, cut, and laminated them. I added a paper clip close to the mouth of the fish and made a fishing rod out of a ruler, ribbon, and a refrigerator magnet. I placed the fish in the empty plastic pool, gave the kids the fishing rods, and told them to go "fishing." Once they caught a fish, they had to count the circles and find the number from a set of stamps and stamp it on their paper. This was a good number recognition game and they really enjoyed it. I can email you the template that I use. Just tell me you are interested in the comments below.
 I got this idea here. 

Fishing Addition game: Same idea as the one above except instead of dots I put in numbers on the fish and once the caught them, they would use the fish counters to add the numbers. This idea came from here.

There are other math ideas on the links above like measuring sea animals, graphing, and making sea fish patterns that we did not have time for. Maybe next time.