SAVE THE OCEAN – A DAY ON OCEAN CONSERVATION
Welcome to our “Ocean Week – DIY At Home Dive Into Ocean Learning” series. For this camp day, we did a brief dive into the larger topic of Ocean Conservation. The kids learned all about how pollution affects the ocean and what we (including kids) can do to help the oceans! Read through for ideas on some online resources, videos, books, crafts, a stem activity, and more!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
If you’ve been fortunate enough to visit an Aquarium or Nature museum, it’s likely that conservation, recycling, upcycling, etc may be familiar concepts. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has quite a few resources on its site, including parent-led lesson plans. While we didn’t follow one completely (as they’re spread out over a few days), we did walk the kids through one of the activities: Ocean Plastic (Day 1). The activity takes kids on a virtual tour of an uninhabited island that is filled with plastic. It’s eye opening to see how much waste there is when no one even lives there…
WHAT TO WATCH
Thanks to blog.padi.com, we found a few videos for kids on ocean conservation: 5 Ocean Documentaries to Get Kids Excited About Conservation. We picked DisneyNature: Oceans as it seemed the most kid-friendly, though it is quite long (about an hour and half). If you’re limiting screen time, you may want to let the kiddos know they’ll only be watching a portion for the day
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
For our snack, we did have some healthy choices but also set up a sugary favorite for later: blue jello! We did, however, put a bit of a learning twist to it 😉
We started off as normal, making the jello, adding it to a cup, etc… BUT then we added red food coloring (we didn’t have brown, so told the kids to imagine this symbolized pollution). With just two drops, we watched the ‘pollution’ go from a small concentrated bit and then start to spread (even without us touching it). In just a few minutes, the ‘pollution’ had spread throughout our jello ocean. To hit the point home, we put a clean glass next to the ‘polluted’ glass. Though it was still a yummy treat, they could clearly see the difference.
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. We picked two picture books that talked about cleaning up the ocean and protecting the water:
- Pout Pout Fish Cleans Up the Ocean by Deborah Diesen. This is a sweet book on Pout Pout fish helping clean the ocean.
- Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom. This book has beautiful illustrations and follows a young Indeginous girl with a message on protecting the planet’s water.
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: SEA, OCEAN, CARE, SAVE, etc.
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices.
- Listen to the song: Blue Planet. What do you think the song is about? What do you think about it? How does it make you feel? Note: the song is about the ocean and is part of a larger album on what we can do to save the ocean. Read more details here
CRAFTS
For our craft, we focused on ‘upcycles’ (reusing objects that would normally be thrown away or recycled) and how we could use that within crafts.
STEM ACTIVITY
We followed this activity from greenkidcrafts (Ocean Pollution Science Fair Projects) that teaches young kids about oil spills and how hard it is to clean them up. Easy & effective activity!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our Dive into the Midnight Zone, Prehistoric Sea Creature Week, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!!!
