A DAY “WITH” SHARKS
Welcome to our “Ocean Week – DIY At Home Dive Into Ocean Learning” series. For this camp day, we focused on learning all about SHARKS! 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
For our Day with Sharks, we had a few introductory online activities. Some arguably were more educational than others, but c’mon – who doesn’t want to find out which shark they are 🙂
- Sharks, explained by nationalgeographic (note, you do have to enter your email address but get 3 free articles). This is a brief intro into Sharks & does have a link to videos as well.
- Great White Shark Worksheet by education.com. This is a quick little coloring page with some facts about the Great White Shark. If you’re following our entire Ocean Camp series, you can add these colored sharks to your mural!
- Shark Info Scavenger Hunt. Interactive (similar to some interactive screens you’d find in a museum where you click on part of the image & get more info). There’s a quiz at the bottom and you can find the answers within the interactive image. The site also has some free printable Shark Coloring Pages that you can use to add to your mural.
- Shark Anatomy. Interactive (also similar to some interactive screens you’d find in a museum where you click on part of the image & get more info). This one does not have a quiz but you can pair it with a drawing activity if you like.
- Shark Quiz. from kidsnationalgeographic.com – test your knowledge about sharks
- Which Shark Are You? Interactive also from kidsnationalgeographic.com. Click through for fun – find out which shark you are. For an added activity, do some more research on the shark you got!
WHAT TO WATCH
Did you know that Wild Kratts actually had a number of shark-related episodes in Shark Week? There are quite a few options (and you can find full episodes on PBS KIDS YouTube). We opted for Stuck on Sharks but you can – at least at the time of this posting – find several full episodes like Sharks Predators and Prey, Creatures that Make a Big Splash,…
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
Snack time may be fun but PLAYING (preparing) your food can be just as fun. For this one, we followed a very easy craft from momendeavors.com: DIY Shark Cups Snack Attack. (To be honest, this is actually so easy we’ve used it for a few other ocean/water fun days!). We follow the directions for the most part but alter two things: we actually don’t cut a slit for the fin (just tape it), and we also use googly eyes (cause my kiddos are obsessed with googly eyes and laugh when they wiggle). Whatever works, right? 🙂
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:
- Hark Hark A Shark! By Bonnie Worth. This one has a familiar character, The Cat in the Hat! 🙂 The cat explores the deep and learns about sharks.
- Pout Pout Fish and the Bully Bully Shark. We LOVE Pout Pout fish books in our household – they are cute, have a sing-song rhyme to them, AND have great messages. This particular one shows kids that we should all treat each other with empathy and stand up for each other 🙂
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, FISH, WHALE SHARK, GREAT WHTE SHARK, SHARK, 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.
- Would you swim with the sharks? Why or why not?
- If you were a shark, what would you think surfers and people in the water were?
CRAFTS
You’d think they’d be tired out of crafts with all the coloring and the shark cups they made, but no…. A dedicated craft activity is a must in our household… While we didn’t have a specific shark craft, we did have some Flower Pot Whale Craft kits left over from another party, so we let them create these. We pretended they were whale sharks 🙂
We also added some fins to our Balloon Fish Craft and turned them into sharks! It’s a very quick, easy, and inexpensive shark-craft 🙂
STEM ACTIVITY
Rather than have a shark experiment, we found a few small Lego sets with sharks in them and then let them use their regular Legos to build upon that scene. Legos are always fun, so this activity was a definite hit 🙂
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!!!
