Ocean Adventures

Last year, we studied fish,

and this year we decided to study about the whole ocean!

We dove into some great books about the ocean,

and then we used fishy stamps,

And tempera paint watered down.

Baby H. did not want to come paint,

until he saw how much fun his sister was having.

Let the mess begin!

I always take pictures at the beginning,

because I never know what will happen!

He preferred to smear the paint around with the fish,

So Miss Sweetie followed suit.

First, we tried to make our ocean mural out of butcher paper and gel paint,

But when it dried, it was one big mess!

The paper shriveled up into a small clump.

We also tried it on a smaller paper and let it dry flat,

but same result.

So if you want to make gel paint, make sure you use heavy duty paper!

Take two:

We used shaving cream and tempera paint.

Kind of a disgusting picture,

but I wanted you to get the idea.

It turned out to be easier to to squirt the paint and the shaving cream directly onto the paper.

It was so sensory,

they loved getting their fingers gooey.

And we ended up using much less paint.

So much fun,

and so ocean like!

It dried with great texture,

and then we attached the fish.

Okay so the only downside,

was that they were really hard to attach.

We ended up using a glue gun.

So you might want to use this idea for painting alone.

Here are great books we studied before hand:

My favorite book we read only has a tiny picture avaliable...sorry!

It is called How Big is the Ocean.

It is totally on level for 4-6 year olds.

It answers questions about the ocean in a simple and cute way.

I also like Way Down Deep

By Patricia Demuth

It talks about the interesting and scary creatures that are found in the depths of the ocean.

So interesting!

Boys would love this book.

It is also an easy reader, so perfect!

The last book we read is called Oceans,

it is meant for upper elementary aged children,

but the pictures were well done.

So we enjoyed flipping through the pages.