Ocean Wonders Sensory Play

A new week of summer learning is upon us here, and I have to say I'm pretty excited!  Our theme this week will be focused on oceans and beaches, a theme picked by Princess, who wants to go to college to be a marine biologist.  (Proud mama right here!  Go for it kid!) The past two weeks, I've really been trying to find ways to involve Curls in our weekly theme activities more often, as he has been dropping his afternoon naps lately. So this week I decided a fun way to introduce our theme would be a sensory bin...still educational for the older two, (they can ask questions, guiding some of the activities for the week) but also an awesome way to involve Curls in the fun!

First I gathered all the various ocean/beach related things that we had around the house: shells, rocks, sea glass, toy ocean creatures. Then I set up one side of our sensory table as the beach line (with some sand) and the other side as the ocean.  I added a few drops of blue coloring for the water, buried the shells along the beach line, and then added the rest of the stuff.

We had tons of toy fish!

Then I explained to the older kids that the first ocean related activity was going to involve the sensory table so Curls wouldn't have to be left out.  The kids were great sports about it all and even divided into teams and decided on a rotation so that each team of two (they had a friend join them) had a chance playing in the beach and in the ocean.  Problem solving and cooperation skills at work!  It makes me so proud when they figure things out for themselves.

Dirty D & Curls started with the ocean.

Dirty D would pick up the sharks and name them while Curls would taste them.

While Princess and her friend searched for shells in the beach

They even found a starfish!

After a while they switched sides...

Curls didn't really like the feel of the sand on his fingers

He'd much rather play with the fish!

I was so happy with how well this worked!  It's always nice to have something simple that all the kids can be involved in together, and it's especially great that they cooperated so well and worked together!