Showing posts with label Ocean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ocean. Show all posts

Sunday, September 5, 2010

End of Ocean Unit

We finished up our summer-long ocean theme a couple of weeks ago. Due to many issues, I am way behind on posting. My blog is a scrapbook of my activities with the boys and I hope that I can keep it up. I am sure that we will redo several projects in the future and it is also helpful to look back and see what we already did. Yesterday I was scanning our activities from last fall trying to get ideas for this fall.

We put most of our projects in the "ocean" that we painted earlier in the summer. They will be hanging in the playroom for a couple more days and then it will be replaced by the next bulletin board. The boys really enjoyed displaying their artwork this way and watching as we filled up our little ocean scene.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Vacation Collage

This week we are finishing up our summer-long study of the ocean. The highlight of course has been visiting the beach not once, but five times, while we were vacationing in the Florida Keys. Even though my grandpa lives there and I have visited the Keys several times in my life, the first thing I always do when I arrive is pick up vacation pamphlets to look for coupons and deals on local attractions. This time I decided to bring them back home with us so that the boys could make a collage to remember the places and experiences of their vacation. Diego loved this project and couldn't wait to show Papi his collage. Papi could not make it this year because of work. :( Mateo just enjoyed making huge puddles of glue.





Thursday, July 1, 2010

Family Dinner and Movie Night- Finding Nemo

Dinner time at our house is rarely fun. The boys are actually good eaters but my husband works long hours during the week and is often gone during dinner time. This makes for a tired mommy by this time of day and I am usually get ready to get everyone feed, bathed, and to bed.
However, I could not help but be inspired after reading the fun Dinner and Movie Nights by Jaime at Momma's Playground. When we found out that Papi would be home for dinner on Wednesday night, we planned our own. We used the movie "Finding Nemo" as our theme because we are studying the ocean right now and because it was available at the library. :)


First, we prepared our placemats. For two of the placemats I wrote NEMO and other designs in glue and the boys covered it will sand.

After they dried, they looked like this.
For the other two placemats we made more handprint clown fish. We also used this to make Father's Day cards. Diego continues to be fascinated by the relationship between the clownfish and the anemone so I used my hands to make the anemone (in green.) He told me the other day that he was a clown fish and I was like anemone and then hugged me afterwards. I (think?) that was a complement.

Next, we took out our shells from our last trip to Florida and examined them closely.




We decorated the table with a large beach towel as a tablecloth and other ocean-related items that we found around the house.

We prepared the meal which consisted of "ocean water" or blue Kool-aid with fish and star-shaped ice cubes, fish sticks, and shell-shaped macaroni and cheese.


Finally, we enjoyed our meal (with shades on, of course, since we are at the beach) and watched the film. It was a big success and I am sure that we will be planning another one soon. I am also proud that besides the macaroni and cheese it cost me nothing. I just used things that I found around the house and a free video from the library. :)






Monday, June 28, 2010

Pulpo

We have been reading a ton of books about the ocean lately so I gave Diego free range of the craft closet when he wanted to make a "proyecto." He chose to make a pulpo (octopus.)


Friday, June 25, 2010

Count Down to Florida

Diego is very excited about our trip to Florida and has never ending questions about it. One of the most frequent is about when we are leaving. We created this count down to Florida medusa (jellyfish). Each morning he pulls off one of the tentacles and knows that when the medusa has no more tentacles it is time to go to Florida!





Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Painting the ocean

As part of our ocean unit this summer, we are creating an ocean scene in the playroom with all of the animals that we are learning about. The first step was to create an ocean background. I do not have a large piece of blue paper and the budget for materials is tight right now so we made our own by painting a large roll of brown paper.


We haven't painted in quite a while and the boys were very excited.

Mateo reminded why we paint OUTSIDE!

We had planned to paint the bottom of the ocean yellow for the sand, but the boys decided to add their own touch and put their hand prints in the "sand." I like their idea much better and there was no way that we were going to paint over those precious hands.



When we were done we celebrated with "paletas." Diego, as usual, inhaled his in five seconds. Mateo generously shared his with his brother. Great afternoon!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Feliz Día de Padres

I found this great idea at Handprint and Footprint Art. Seriously, if you are looking for a handmade gift to make with your little one, check out her website.

We have been reading tons of books about the ocean and fish. Diego's favorite fish is definitely the clown fish. He is fascinated how the anemone stings everyone else but does not hurt the clown fish.


I tried to make our Father's Day's card fish look like clown fish using orange, white, and black. I was amazed at how well the boys sat still while I painted their hands -especially my squirmy Mateo. I think that Papi will love it!

Feliz Día de Padres!

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Summer "School"

Our summer calendar is already filled up with park playdates, library storytimes, and a couple of trips out of town. Since we will be so busy, I decided to keep it simple and concentrate on one theme for our summer learning. We will still check out books on anything and everything under the sun but for the most part we will be learning about the......

OCEAN.

One of our trips next month (that I will talk about tomorrow) is part of the inspiration for our summer theme. I am so excited for the boys to learn about the ocean and then get some hands-on experience.

When I pick a theme to work on I always do two things. First, I get on our libraries website and reserve every book in Spanish that they have on the subject. Second, I search my favorite learning websites for activities about our topic. Below are some of the links to printables that we plan on doing over the next couple of months. I also have a ton of crafts and other fun activities planned that I hope to share.

Ocean Math

Spanish Letters

Coloring Pages
1. Orca
2. Manatí


Games




My Favorites



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