Tuesday, August 5, 2014

"Under the Sea" Mommy School

During the month of July, the kids and I went on a learning discovery "Under the Sea". This was the shortest mommy school I've done because we ended up being out of town most of July, but nonetheless we still had fun.  I started off with a sensory bath to get my munchkins excited!
 Kason and I made blue jello together and put that at the bottom not just for coloring, but for texture as well. We added our various ocean animals and even coral reef.
Kason and Zoe had a great time, but Max wasn't too fond of the jello...
The kids and I went to the library at the beginning of our unit to pick up several books for research. We read all about the ocean, animals that live there, what coral reefs are, and why waves happen. One of the reasons I chose this subject is because of Kason's obsession with sharks, so we spent a great deal of time rereading his extensive shark library :). One afternoon during nap time, Kason and I studied about the 4 ocean zones. We watched online videos because he is a dicovery and national geographic fanatic. We even created our own diagram of the 4 zones with the various animals that live there...
 Another fun activity was our seashore sensory bin...
Max wasn't interested in touching the sand or seashells at all...
but he loved watching Zoe get dirty!
At one point, little lady even exfoliated both her and Max's legs :). Since Max really struggles with textures and sensory play, I decided to do a few activities on his level to learn about the basics of the ocean. First, I let him feel water beads and talked about the color blue of the ocean...
Since I could hardly get him to touch the sand, we tried a little bit bigger rocks and talked about the bottom of the ocean and beaches...
 He thought both of these textures were more fun when he would grab a handful and throw them over his head :). The other two rascals just giggled away at his antics and couldn't wait for their turn to touch. Max's vision therapist left an ocean mat with him this spring, so all the kids had fun playing with it during the unit. We ended up putting the mat in various locations and talked about fish swimming around...
I think Kason's favorite activity of course was when we talked about sharks. The two new fun facts he learned this time were that if a shark quits swimming they sink and sharks have no bones, only cartilage like what we have at the end of our noses. Of course we can't hardly talk about animals without becoming one ourselves :)...
These two loved swimming around the house...
while I sang the Jaws theme song!
Something new we did this unit was going on field trips! Daniel and I have taken the kids to Seaworld twice this summer and Mimi took us to the Houston Aquarium once when were there for an appointment. The kids got to take a train ride...
 we even loaded up Max...
and it took us to a tunnel underwater to see sharks!
 It was really cool to see the different types of sharks swim around us. Kason loved being able to point out the various types he knew about and show off his "shark knowledge" to Mimi. Kason and I got to see stingrays and even bought food for them...
 but he got a little nervous and wouldn't actually feed them. The coolest part was eating dinner at the aquarium because we got to sit at a table right by a huge glass tank!
While eating we enjoyed checking out the variety of fish, eels, stingrays and try out seafood ourselves! A big thank you goes to Mimi for allowing these kids to have fun exploring the ocean at the aquarium :). Of course throughout the unit, the kids watched Finding Nemo and Kason watched a couple of ocean related episodes of Wild Kratts. My little man loves to soak up knowledge and learn new facts about real life places and animals. As usual, the kids and I had a blast learning and discovering together...getting our hands dirty...and having a little "Under the Sea" fun!

1 comment:

  1. Maybe I should send Sadie to Mommy school at your house, since I am not really good at that. She would have loved the subject this month! Anything to do with the beach or water :)

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