To go along with our ocean theme, I picked two story books that we already own: Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle, and The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. It's a good thing I did, too, because sickness kept us home from library story time two weeks in a row!
Mr. Seahorse is a strange but true book about father-fish who take care of fish eggs until they hatch. Besides the usual Eric Carle illustrations, every few pages is translucent. "As Mr. Seahorse drifted gently through the sea, he passed right by . . . ." A stonefish hiding behind a rock, for example, and you can just see the stonefish through the rock on the translucent page. I hope I'm describing that adequately. So for an art project, I first had the boys draw pictures of fish:
Owen's lion fish, with black and brown stripes just like in the book.
Levi's purple flounder.
Then, I cut apart a page protector (because who has transparencies around anymore?!) and had them color "ocean plants" with crayons. I wanted to do markers, but they kept rubbing off; I should have done paint, but didn't want to get it out at the time. The crayon showed up nicely on the plastic, but didn't hide the picture underneath very well. I taped the plant page on top of the fish page, and we chanted from the book: "As Mr. Seahorse drifted gently through the sea, he passed right by some flounder hiding behind the sea grass." (For example, with Levi's.) It makes sense if you've seen the book, I promise.
Someone (probably my aunt, but I don't remember for sure) gave us a fishing game that we've never played before, so this seemed like the perfect time to pull it out. It's very simple: pick a fish with the rod, and if the color on the other side matches the color of your boat, keep it. All of the boys know their colors, so I bravely tried to play with everyone.
Silas kept grabbing the fishing rod and walking through the fish.
Owen found it entirely incomprehensible that he couldn't flip the fish over to check the color before he fished for it.
Levi kept randomly getting my color and handing them to me instead of putting them back in the "ocean."
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(Sorry for the awful picture.)
So, eventually I whisked Silas away for a different activity and let Levi and Owen play however they wanted to. This is real life, folks. Lest you think my alleged perfectly-prepared preschool looks any different than normal life with four kids under six years old.
We did a little more work in our ocean-printables folders, with the beloved do-a-dot markers.
Following the orange fish, a sort of pre-maze activity.
Counting jellyfish and dotting the correct number.
Finally, our rainbow fish activity! This idea came from the ABC Jesus Loves Me curriculum. Print the fish, paint with watercolors, sprinkle with salt while wet. When the paint dries, brush off most of the salt, and you're left with an interesting, quasi-sparkly texture!
Levi on the left, Owen on the right.
I have one more craft planned, but with our staycation happening over the next two weeks, I'm not sure we'll get to it. It's a paper plate fish craft -- check it out here. Since we actually made it to story time this week, we picked up two more ocean books from the library. I highly recommend the Kingfisher Navigators series: bright pictures, interesting facts, engrossing but not overwhelming for inquisitive little minds.
Boys looking at ocean books.
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