DAY 2 – OCEAN EXPLORATION DAY
Welcome to our “Amazing Ocean Camp – Dive into Midnight Zone” series – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun themed activities on the ocean’s midnight zone! For this day, we learned about ocean exploration – how scientists search and investigate the ocean, the different tools they can use, and why studying the depths of the ocean is so challenging.
Like most of our days, we have a mix of activities to introduce the topic and keep the kids learning throughout the day. For this day, we read a very interesting marine scientist book, watched a few videos, read a few web pages, used our creativity to create some imaginative underwater exploration robots, and performed a submarine simulation. Read on to check out the fun!
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 is 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
Most kids are likely familiar with the ocean and submarines or robots, but we’ll be delving a bit deeper and combining those concepts! We like to start our day by talking about what they know and then letting them know what we’ll study for the day.
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- Ocean Explorer: Katy Croff Bell | Best Job Ever | Nat Geo Kids by Nat Geo Kids (2m)
- Dive into the Deep by Monterey Bay Aquarium (9m)
- Deep Sea Robots by Harvard Museum of Natural History (3m)
- Wild Kratts: Creatures of the Deep Sea S4E24 (30m)
- How do Submarines Work? by SciShow Kids (5m)
- Friday STEAM: Water Bottle Submarine (25m)
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
For our snack of the day, we followed this cute snack from artsycraftsymom.com: Hot Dog Bun Submarine Snack.
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned!
For our books of the day, we concentrated on one book about marine science for kids. There is a chapter in there on deep sea creatures (some of which we had planned to study for the rest of the week)! The book also has some activities that definitely inspired our kiddos to try. Great book!
- Marine Science for Kids: Exploring and Protecting Our Watery World, Includes Cool Careers and 21 Activities (66) by Bethanie Hestermann
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: OCEAN, LAYERS, MIDNIGHT ZONE, EXPLORATION, MARINE SCIENCE
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. This was our writing prompt of the day but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- If you could design a deep sea robot or submarine for exploration, what would it look like and why?
CREATE & CRAFT
If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic. While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning!
Our craft of the day was pretty open-ended: Design an ROV. We gave our kiddos some paper, craft supplies, and other upcycles and asked them to design a prototype for a robot for deep ocean exploration. We asked them to incorporate any of the things they’ve learned throughout the day that would make their robot really useful for scientist.
While we explained that they would use some non-water proof projects for their design, they could imagine (or talk through) what other materials they’d use if they actually created their ROV. To make things even more fun, we gave them some stickers, sequins, pom poms, and markers to let them decorate their prototypes 🙂
Since the craft is open-ended, it’s a great opportunity to talk through their thought process and what they’re designing. Their thought process and what they’re incorporating or how they’re incorporating it is actually the most important piece here – it’s not so much the end product but how they’re getting there that’s the real benefit with these types of projects. If you need a bit of inspiration, the videos of some deep sea robots are a great start – some of our little ones patterned theirs after the soft robots they saw in the videos (including some sensors and areas to collect samples) while another one decided to create a control panel. With these open-ended projects, you really get to see what they’ve absorbed and watch their creativity shine!
STEM & STEAM ACTIVITIES
While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math! These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!
- Water Bottle Submarine: This one was actually tied to one of the links to the videos at the top – building a water bottle submarine: Friday STEAM: Water Bottle Submarine (24m) by Warren County Library. And while, we’ve learned throughout the day the best way to explore the deep sea is by using ROVs, this was still a fun activity.
- ROV Scientist: This is a fun activity that comes from Encounter EDU (ROV Scientist) that simulates how ROVs collect samples from the ocean floor and is pretty easy to set up – you can use anything you already have and don’t need extra supplies. 🙂
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home camp 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 other Ocean Ideas or DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
