Ocean Animals!

This week we got to touch and hold a number of different objects from the ocean.  The kids loved seeing the various sizes and shapes of seashells, listening to see if they could hear the ocean in them too!  We also had a sea star, crab pincer, barnacles, and sand dollars that they got to handle and feel.  I love hands-on learning!  It was a fun way to experience a little bit of the ocean right at our school!

I love how these darling children wanted each other to experience the sounds of seashells together!

Since we have been learning about so many different animals that live all over the world, we did a lot of sorting this week between land animals and ocean animals.  Our puppets made for a perfect way to sort animals!

As part of our sorting activity, the kids took turns making their land animal or ocean animal puppets move, dance, swim, or fly around the rug!

After talking about many different ocean animals, we used our foam ocean animal shapes to help us review some of the animals we’d learned about this week. 

We noticed our animal shapes were all mixed up in our container and couldn’t tell which one had more or less.  So, for one of our projects, we sorted the animals according to animal type…

  and then counted and graphed them to find out which group had the most and which had the least and if any had the same amount.  Math can be a lot of fun!

 For one of our take-home projects, the kids got to choose animal pictures to glue on their papers according to whether they live on the land or in the ocean.  After learning about so many animals over the past couple of months, it was fun to see which animals the kids remembered learning about and which they liked best.

We also learned about the letter “R” this week.  I am always amazed at how much children absorb and learn.  Through continued exposure to letters, shapes, colors, and numbers, children pick up so much!  Remember to point these things out every day as you are with your children at home, running errands, and playing together to reinforce what we learn at pre-school!  I love being able to teach these sweet children!