Shell Counting

 We found all of these great shells (and shell bits) at the beach last week! I had a few activities that I wanted to do at the beach but didn't get to, and this was one of them.

 I put out some shell-themed number cards, and asked Kenna to do some counting.

One through four was simple. Easy peasy, mama! 5-9 got a little tricky. She counts faster than her finger moves, if that makes sense. (she touches one shell and says, one two)  Anyhow, we got through nine before I ran out of patience. :) 

Check out our other ocean activities, too! Click "ocean" on the sidebar to get you there.

Ocean Tot Trays

 As I have mentioned in my previous Ocean Week posts here, here,  and here, our family went to the beach for a week!   I brought along a bunch of activities for Kenna and her cousins to do during "down time".  This activity was really fun... I brought ocean erasers and our number rocks. I didn't have a real plan in mind, but I figured we could do lots of things with both manipulatives, and I was right.

 This tray had the girls doing 1:1 correspondance. I lined up #1-4 for Kenna and #5-8 for her 4 year old cousin. Simply choose an ocean animal and get counting! They also used the erasers for some made-up game I wasn't privy too, and they used them as throwing stones in hopscotch.

 Stamping fun! I got these stampers from Oriental Trading before we left. I let the girls stamp with them on paper just for fun, and to get it out of their systems.

 Then I set them to work on a 1:1 activity- stamp to represent each number. It was fun!

 Taking a break to count the stamps.

 Our finished work. This was novel for all of the girls and they liked it. After they did the work, I let them do free-play with the stampers.

I printed this cute accordian booklet from an ocean tot pack on ????  I gave the girls crayons and encouraged them to color each ocean animal. They weren't really into boring ole coloring though. We did go through the booklet and ID each animal, so that was something.

Okay, that's all the photos I've found. We did some other things, but unless Kenna and I pull them out to play again at home, I have no photo record of them! :)

Ocean week!!

Our family spent a week at the beach! I know it is a little late in the season, but eventually you'll be looking for ocean activities, so here they are. Here are some of the fun things we did on our awesome family vacation. I packed a HUGE tub of activities for Kenna and her cousins, since I figured a few rainy days or long afternoons would need some indoor fun. I wanted to mainly focus our work on ocean animals, but brought a few off-theme items as well. I actually brought a lot more stuff than we completed (cause the beach and the private pool took up most of our time!), so I think I'll sort the rest of the activities back into our letter of the week files i.e. stuff on whales can go in W, and pull them out as we go.


Painting- the girls and I went and sat on the beach and observed the sunset.  It was fabulous!  Then we came in to paint our own sunsets. The whole concept of using colors from the sunset to replicate what they saw may have been a bit over their heads, but they really got into it! Watercolors were our medium of choice, but I forgot watercolor paper so we just used plain paper. The art came out great.


Shell Matching- we went on a nature walk along the shore and picked up some unique shells. The girls loved walking and chasing the waves. They liked finding really big shells. Kenna decided she only liked white shells, and rejected every colored shell I offered her.

When we got back to the beach house, Aunt Kristen helped by tracing 6 of the shells onto index cards. Instant matching game! (since the girls are young, I made sure the shells were really different. If they were older, I would have tried to trick them with more similar shaped shells.)

Kenna got the chance to practice taking turns with someone besides me. She had a great time with this game, and we brought it out several times during the week.

I'm a South Floridian at heart, so finding these clam/mussel/oyster? shells was really exciting! We don't have these on our beach! :)

 It's a clam.  Go with it.
We made blue playdoh to do some ocean activities. It's my favorite recipe. I'll post about it later. On this day, I gave them googly eyes and told them to make some ocean animals.  As we got started, Aunt Kristen found some skewers in a drawer and we added them to the fun. (we chopped off the really sharp points first.)

The skewers, the googly eyes and the blue playdoh was very inspiring. They got to work right away making all kinds of interesting creatures!

 It's a narwhale.  Go with it!

A school of fish!

After I finish unpacking, I'll post some more of our ocean week activities. I'm exhausted!