Ocean Commotion >> Oyster Pearls Preschool Craft

Our first week of the Ocean Commotion preschool theme from Mother Goose Time focuses on the Ocean Scape: Ocean Water, Ocean Floor, Ocean Caves and Crevices, Ocean Plants, and the Coral Reef.

Some of our learning objectives:

Identify some plants and animals that live in the ocean.
Describe the ocean water and ocean floor.
Describe the motion of the water at the bottom of the ocean.
Describe seaweed.
Describe a coral reef and animals that might live there.

Skill learning objectives:

Name writing
Describing what child sees on a poster.
Follow positional words while pretending to be an animal.
Use sight, smell and taste to describe water.
Transition smoothly from one part of an activity to another.
Control small muscles to string beads on a pipe cleaner.
Use manipulatives to count up to 8.
Hold a writing tool with a tripod grip.
Demonstrate an awareness of personal space while dancing.
Draw a picture and tell a story about it.
Classify animals according to where they live in the ocean.
Respond to pictures and letters in an alphabet book.
Demonstrate fine motor control during a threading project.

As you can see, we have a lot of purpose and goals behind the activities we’re doing with Mother Goose Time! And it’s fun.

Ocean Commotion >> Oyster Pearls Preschool Craft

Our oyster pearl crafts are simple and the results are stunning! It’s exciting to discover what’s found on the ocean floor!

Discuss: What types of shells have you seen?
Explore: Invite children to explore how a paper plate is similar to the shape of the letter O.
Create: Children create an oyster shell by folding the paper plate in half. Thread beads (pearls) on the pipe cleaner. Then twist the ends to create an O-shaped bracelet. Hide (we taped it in) the bracelet inside the oyster shell.

Salty or Sweet?

This was a super fun science experiment! The kids always like to taste something so they were on board right away.

To learn about how how the ocean tastes, we tried three cups of water. Each cup of water looked the same. They smelled the same too. First I poured a small amount of the plain water into a cup for each of them. Next, they tasted the salty water. I wish you could see their expressions! They were not very happy with that sample. Still, they were not deterred from trying the sweetened water. Much better!

We learned that ocean water is salty and would taste about the same as a cup of water with one teaspoon of salt in it.

Counting Shells

I’m so excited about the new math manipulatives that are coming in the kits each month. They’re theme-related and so much fun. Kids love to get their hands on materials they don’t get to handle very often. Shells are a wonderful nature item for learning and play. We used them to learn about the number 8, work on number recognition and explore what we might find in ocean caves and crevices.

These shell counting cards are so handy for many math games.

Turn over all the cards. Each child takes a turn choosing a card and identifying what number he or she found. Place the card in a line. Children can put them in number order. Then take turns counting out the number of shells for each card. My group was so engaged in this math activity!