Bubble Print Ocean Layers

When I shared our Ocean Unit I mentioned that National Geographic Kids Oceans was one of our favorite books. There is one page in particular that Big Buddy loves - he'll study it for several minutes at a time.

national geographic kids oceans, pages 58-59

Since he's so captivated by the picture we've read the text several times and decided it would be fun to create our own ocean layers...

Our supplies: blue, black, and white paint, small bowls, stir sticks, bubble wrap, sponge brushes, white paper/foam board, sea life stencils, markers, stickers.

Step 1: pour a little blue paint into the three bowls.

Step 2: add a bit of white paint to one cup to create a lighter shade of blue. This will be the top ocean layer/sunlight zone.

Step 3: add a bit of black paint to one cup to create a darker shade of blue. This will be the bottom ocean layer/midnight zone. The remaining cup of blue paint is the middle layer/twilight zone.

Step 4: paint bubble wrap with the three different shades of blue. Painting the lightest shade on top and the darkest on the bottom.

Step 5: flip bubble wrap on to white paper/foam board and press down.

Step 6: let paint dry completely.

Step 7: decorate paper/foam board using markers, sea life stencils, and stickers. While reading the book we talked a lot about what animals live in what layers. We didn't focus on this too much during the craft but instead I let the boys follow their on creative ideas.

the stickers were a great fine motor activity for mini
man

big buddy's picture

mini man's picture

My favorite part of this craft was the stories the boys made up about their pictures

big buddy: "these fish don't see the shark because he's camouflaged, they
are swimming right into his mouth! this fish sees him and is swimming
away super fast!

mini man: "that's a baby fish and that's a daddy fish - they love each other
so they are kissing."

Looking for more ocean learning ideas, please check our our ocean unit. You can also find lots more units and crafts on our homeschool page.

A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

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Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

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Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

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Comments

AngelaSeptember 29, 2012 at 11:00 AM
Isn't is fun watching them be creative? I love hearing the cute stories that go along with kids artwork!
AnonymousSeptember 29, 2012 at 11:31 AM
What a wonderful craft! I love the stencil and sticker layering included in it.

Thank you for linking to Read.Explore.Learn. I have just started a Facebook page for Read.Explore.Learn and will be featuring this post on it this week. Here is how to get to the Facbook page http://www.facebook.com/ReadExploreLearn.
Pam @ Keeping Life CreativeOctober 1, 2012 at 6:26 PM
I love this!! We're doing an ocean unit right now, and I think I'll borrow this art project idea :).

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