Under the Sea

Under the Sea

Hi all sorry it has been so long since I last posted what with having a toddler, decorating bedrooms and becoming more and more pregnant it has been hard to fit this in. 

However I'm really excited to share with you some of the things Oscar and I have got up to recently. 

Since going part time (dropping one day) I have found that most of our focused learning takes place on a Friday when I have Oscar to myself.   

This post all stemmed from reading this little book I got given in the early weeks of Oscars life.

He absolutely loves it so I thought what better than to focus some learning activities around it. 

The hole in the bottom of the sea.

Other books

The Snail and the Whale

Finding Nemo

I bought a bag of little sea life creatures from Ebay for only £3 what a bargain. 

We then set about our activities with them.

This magic sand is so good - Blue Kinetic sand from Amazon

Kinetic Sand

We explored making prints with the animals, hiding them under the sand, counting how many we could find, naming the animals and discussing if they go under the water or stay near the edge. There are so many different things you can do with a packet of small animals and the conversations you can have are endless. 

Bath Time

I decided to freeze a couple of the animals so he could play with them at bath time too. He was very excited to see the frozen pots and couldn't wait to put them in the bath. As he watched the ice melt away from the animals he tried to pull them out so we discussed how the heat and steam from the bath melted the ice. The excitement on his face was priceless especially as he could pull them out of the ice blocks. 

He liked to line the animals up along the bath side which again was great as he told me what he thought each one was. We counted them on and off the self as they dived back into the water. 

Imaginative play 

He loved playing with the penguin and dolphin and began to make up stories as though they were talking and swimming in the water together. Isn't it adorable watching the ideas and imagination flow in their little heads? Of course mummy then had to use the shark to be nasty shark. We discussed about sharks being more of the predators of the sea. 

Using material as props

One Friday morning Oscars clothes were drying on the radiator as they do. As we were focusing our learning on sea animals I decided to use his blue clothes to resemble the sea. Oscar loved this idea so off I went on the hunt for more blue clothes. We hid the animals in the water, counted them in and out of the water and then started to talk about legs on people and animals as Oscar pointed out the legs on the octopus. He now plays with this little octopus every night in the bath and we always talk about its legs comparing them to how many legs Oscar etc has. 

Positional language

As part of the early learning goals children are encouraged to learn and use positional language for example on, under etc.

In this picture we named the seals- Mummy seal, Daddy seal and Oscar seal. We then used the language of next to, behind, in front and in the middle. Oscar preferred to put Oscar seal 'next to' Mummy seal :)

Since this little activity he has began to use this language a lot within his imaginative play. 

I hope this has given you just a few ideas you could do with your little ones. Please share it with any friends or people you know who have young ones especially with it being the summer holidays. If you've enjoyed this post please take a look at my previous ones. I'm hoping to get some more up over the next few weeks all depending on when Baby M number two comes along as i'm due at the end of August. 

Thanks again 

Sam

x