Ocean

Activities
One of my friends snapped these cute pictures of her kids "Pillow Surfing" They got all dressed up in their swimsuits and grabbed their pillows and went surfing right in their own home in the middle of winter. Aren't they adorable? The kids watched Soul Surfer and wanted to give surfing a try.

We found some cute coloring pages and interactive ocean things here.


We played ocean memory. Busy bee has cards already made that you just print and cut out. We laminated ours so they would last a little longer. Click here to find ocean memory.


A two year old isn't the greatest at playing memory the way it's supposed to be played so we put the cards right side up and searched for the match.


Then we lined them up like a train. ; ) Not with the this weeks theme but he just loved it!


We also watched lots of ocean/under the sea movies. We watched Finding Nemo, The Little Mermaid and the Reef. These matching fruit snacks were fun to eat while watching.
















After watching Nemo we blew some bubbles of our own. This was a great way to release some of this guys energy!

We also bought a fish and learned how to take care of it. We bought a Beta. This little man loves feeding it each day.

The little pellets that Beta's eat are pretty easy to measure out. Another fun thing to do is hold a mirror up to the fish and watch his face fan out. Betas are fighting fish so it's a defense mechanism.

We also made "Waves in a bottle!" This was super easy and fun for the kiddos to make there own waves. We used an empty pop bottle but you could also use an empty water bottle. Then we added water to the bottle with a couple drops of food coloring and topped it off with vegetable oil. I also tried to explain how water and oil don't mix to by 2 year old but he was to excited making waves to care.

We had lots of fun doing fun ocean activities we always do like reading books about the ocean or doing this fun puzzle. One of my favorite things about "Theme Week" is that a lot of the activities that we do a lot seem to become fun and exciting again and not so boring.

We watched The Little Mermaid in these laundry basket boats. After the movie was over we put a bunch of toy fish/bath toys on the floor and caught them with our net.

You could also watch a movie on a beach towel or in your swimming gear.

We also went sock fishing! This was by far my little kiddos favorite activity...we did it at least 5 times through out the week. It was really simple too. We just put magnets in the toes of random socks and lay them out on the floor behind this chair. I tied a ribbon to a stick and glued a magnet to the bottom and then let my little guy fish away.

We made this simple paper plate fish and then colored it.

We also made this "Under the Sea" sensory bag. We filled a freezer bag with blue hair gel from the dollar store and then put beads in it.

We also got this Turtle from Wal-mart for $1 and had fun watching it grow and then shrink again. They have all sorts of Under the Sea animals like a Starfish, Crab, Turtle, Eel and an Octopus.




Here are a few other ideas of things to try:

• Let your child Snorkel in tub
• Go to an indoor aquarium and learn about all the fish
• If you live near a beach or lake take a walk along the beach, gather sea shells.
• Play the game Go Fish
• Explore salt water....just add a tsp of salt to water and let your child taste it.
• Go fishing in the bathtub.
• Play fish, fish shark instead of duck duck goose.

We also sang the fish song while doing the actions:

Fish Song

One, two three, four, five (hold fingers up while counting)

Once I caught a fish alive,

Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten (hold up more fingers)

Then I let it go again.

Why did you let it go

because it bit my finger so

which finger did it bit

this little finger on the right.

Ocean Snacks

Making the snacks for our theme weeks is so fun and children LOVE it!

We made mini fish aquariums with candy fish and blue jello. So yummy and pretty too.

We also dyed raman noodles green to look like seaweed and served with a hot dog octopus.


We had lots of fun fishing. Just dab peanut butter on the end of a piece of celery and fish for the gold fish.


As you can tell, these kids LOVED this activity and snack!


We made grilled cheese and ate them with our tomato soup. We didn't have a cookie cutter or anything so we just cut this shape out.


Tomato soup with goldfish. You could add these to any soup to make a fun ocean meal/snack.


Here are some other snack ideas from other sites:

Fish Cupcakes from Cupcakes Take the Cake

Ocean Themed Lunch Box from $5 Dinners

Apricot Clown Fish from Family Fun

Pearl Bites from Family Fun

Saran Wrap on Windows

I have wondered for a very long time if the trick of placing saran wrap over windows helps keep your home warmer. Well....I am happy to say that we have placed saran wrap over our windows and it has helped a ton! (We live in an older home with single pained windows and used to be able to feel a breeze come through the cracks. Now it just moves the saran wrap.)

I also have heard that it's not worth buying the saran wrap because its hard to tape it together and put over the windows...lots of people told me to just buy a kit. The kits are about $10-not bad and saran wrap is just under $2-lots better. One roll did all of our windows and wasn't to hard. Here is a trick to avoiding taping pieces together and save money in not having to buy a kit.

First, roll a long piece of saran wrap out (enough to cover the span of a window)

After you have a piece cut out take the roll of saran wrap and roll it over that piece while unrolling a new piece, you will want to overlap the last piece by about an inch

Continue this until you have a long enough piece to cover your window

The saran wrap should stick to each other...no tape needed except to tape the final piece to the window.

I did this about a month ago and it's still working:)

Using Trash to Organize Pantry

We go through a big pack of fruit snacks every month and I got to thinking I really need to use these boxes for something and so I did. We have an awkward shaped pantry that I put a ton of these boxes in to store a bunch of awkward shaped stuff...and I love it! They hold Ramen perfectly along with pudding packets, granola bars, juice boxes, and chips/cracker packs. I labeled each box with a different colored label so my little kids know whats in each box.