A DIVE INTO OCEAN LAYERS, THE DEEP SEA, AND LEARNING ABOUT SEA CREATURES!
Welcome to our “Ocean Week – DIY At Home Dive Into Ocean Learning” series. For this camp day, we focused on Ocean Layers, the Deep Sea, and all the creatures that live below! Read through to find ideas on interactive online games, videos, experiments, crafts, food crafts, 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
For our intro into Ocean Layers, we had two activities:
- Alittlepinchofperfect.com has a fun craft (that pairs with a short youtube video) on learning the Ocean Layers: Learning About the Layers of the Ocean. Though my kiddos may not have made theirs 100% accurate, it’s a cute & fun way for little ones to put into practice what they just learned!
- Pbslearning.com has a free, interactive activity where you follow the Cat in the Hat into the Deep Sea to search for coral reefs and creatures. It’s a fun way to merge a character they most likely know (Cat in the Hat) with something that might be new – the deep sea.
WHAT TO WATCH
For our video of the day, we watched the Wild Kratts: Creatures of the Deep Sea (~ 50min). And you could probably guess from the title, but it was a video focused on exploring the deep sea and all the creatures that live beneath 🙂 It is available on Amazon but for a small fee.
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
Snack time may be fun but PLAYING (preparing) your food can be just as fun. For this one, we had some left over Mermaid Plates (from the Dollar Tree) but a regular blue or plate would work as well. We made cheese shaped sea creatures using Mini Food Cutters. Pair with crackers or just eat the cheese on its own 🙂
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. We picked Down, Down, Down, a Journey to the Bottom of the Sea By Steve Jenkins. Some pages do have a bit of text on there but they’re filled with a ton of information that any little ocean/sea-fan would love 🙂
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, LAYER, FISH, 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.
- Imagine you are in a submarine and going down through the layers of the ocean. Describe what you see and which layer is your favorite. Why is that layer your favorite?
EXPERIMENTS
Bloglearningresources.com has a nice & relatively easy experiment on creating ocean layers in a jar. With this experiment, you get the opportunity to teach the kiddos about density as well. Very fun & fitting experiment to our Ocean Layers Day!
CRAFTS
We end the camp day with a craft and let their imaginations run free 🙂 Since we had already finished up a creative craft earlier in the day (the Ocean Layers), we planned to use a kit for this portion of the day. Admittedly mermaids are not true deep sea creatures, but do we really know for sure 🙂 🙂 🙂 We used the Creativity for Kids: Mini Garden Mermaid Kit and they were SUPER excited about the pretty pearls inside. Plus, they got the added responsibility fun task for making sure the garden had enough water 😉
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!!!
