Well hello, friends! I am back after an unintentional 2 week break from the blog! Fourth of July being on a Tuesday threw me all out of whack, and then Trav and I went on a little trip that I will tell you about in another post!
So anyway, I wanted to catch you up on some of the fun things I've been doing with Ella during Lucas's morning naps! Before all of the holiday/vacation chaos, we did a whole bunch of beach-themed activities!
First things first, here are some of the ocean books we read throughout the week:
{Into the A, B, Sea | There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell! | A House for Hermit Crab | First Big Book of the Ocean | Ladybug Girl at the Beach | Swimmy | Over in the Ocean | Duck & Goose Go to the Beach | At the Beach | Beach Day | Paddington at the Beach}
Our first educational activity was the ocean animal count and clip cards!
It took Ella a few tries to figure out the clothespins, but she loved this game! I think next time, I may just use a bingo chip instead of a clothespin.
We also got out my old teaching stuff (I used to have an ocean theme in my classroom) and made patterns with some fish cutouts!
We also worked on her fine-motor skills (which we definitely need to continue working on, in a major way!) by doing this tracing page.
Ella LOVED making this octopus, by putting sticky dots on his tentacles.
I also let her color the octopus when she was done with the stickers :)
For our last educational activity, I got a big thing of shells from Target and had Ella sort them into big and small.
For our art activities, we made:
...a handprint crab...
...a paper plate Rainbow Fish (I adapted the idea from here. We used dot markers instead of paint/stamps/circle sequins, and pieces of aluminum foil for the Rainbow Fish's shiny scales.)...
(This one was kind of a disaster. Ella just kept rubbing the ball around instead of stamping it. Luckily, once we added his eyes, mouth and fins, he looked alright.)
...and last but not least, a paper bag jellyfish!
Our snack was my extremely lazy version of this. The fish sprinkles conveniently came on top of the tub of bright blue frosting.
Finally, we played this little game on our screened in porch.
There are so many ways to modify this. First, I just had Ella go around to each animal and we practice saying their names and what they did.
Once she was comfortable with the animal names, I would tell her to go to a certain color. ("Go stand on the animal that is on yellow paper..."). Then I would tell her to go to an animal that started with a certain letter. We tried rhyming ("Go to the animal that rhymes with 'grab'") but that was a little too hard for her (and me, to think of something that rhymes with dolphin!).
All in all another fun thematic week for Ella, me and my old teaching supplies! :)
Umm amazing!!! She's a smart whip!
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