Sealife

Personal Social and Emotional

Circle-time game – pass a soft toy sea creature around the circle. When a child is holding the creature, it is their turn to speak. Can the children name their favourite sea creature and say why they like it?

Play a parachute game to encourage children to work together. Place a soft toy dolphin onto a parachute and ask the children to work together to make the dolphin jump. Challenge them to make the dolphin jump high into the air or jump low to the ground.

Encourage the children to work together in teams to create submarines in the block/construction area.

Create an under the sea small world scene for children to explore together. Add a shallow tray of water and provide some plastic sea creatures and a submarine for children to use together to create stories.

Communication and Language

Place a handful of small world sea creatures in the centre of the circle and name each creature with the children. Tell them to close their eyes. As they do, remove one of the toys. Then, ask the children to open their eyes and try to work out which creature has swum away.

Create an ocean-themed water tray. Add some small world sea creatures along with some cellophane seaweed. Encourage the children to talk about what they can find in the water, using new vocabulary to describe the different creatures.

Physical Development

Children could develop their movement skills by creating movements representing different types of sea creatures. Children could create different actions for sea creatures, such as laying on the ground with arms and legs outstretched for a starfish, running around the space for a fish or walking around with wobbly movements for a jellyfish.

Decorate a large, empty cardboard box to look like a shark and cut out a slot for its mouth. Provide children with beanbags to throw to feed the shark.

Make some blue jelly and place some small world sea creatures into it before it sets. Provide children with scoops and spoons to uncover the sea creatures.

Literacy

Provide some shallow trays of sand and encourage the children to explore mark making in the trays.

Hide some Sea creature photos around the outside area and provide clipboards with paper and pencils for children to draw their favourite picture. Can they tell a friend about what they have drawn? Can they use their knowledge of letters and print to write some labels for their pictures?

Mathematics

Sing the counting song, ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Once I Caught a Fish Alive’ with the children. Encourage the children to join in with the rhyme to recite numbers past five. They can also be encouraged to show ‘finger numbers’ up to five for the first part of the rhyme.

Draw an outline of a fish onto a large sheet of paper. Draw some scales onto the fish and draw one, two or three dots onto each scale. Invite children to roll a dice and colour the scale with the matching number of dots.

In a water tray, invite children to explore capacity as they create under the sea bottles. Provide some blue coloured water with strips of green cellophane seaweed, seashells and small world sea creatures.

Provide some shallow trays of shaving foam mixed with a few drops of blue food colouring. Encourage the children to explore mark making in the trays to represent different numbers.

Knowledge and Understanding of the World

Hide a selection of sea creature photos around the outside area and encourage children to go on a diving adventure to see what sea creatures they can spot. They could use a camera or tablet to take photos of the sea creatures they find.

Provide some playdough for children to use to make the different stages of a life cycle of a sea turtle. Place the photos alongside the playdough as a prompt for the children’s models. Freeze some small world fish inside ice cubes. Place these in a large activity tray or water tray for children to explore. Can they describe what happens to the ice throughout the day? How can they free the fish from the ice?

Expressive Art and Design

Provide large sheets of paper and shades of blue paint along with paintbrushes. Play some water-themed music or water sound effects and invite the children to paint pictures representing the movement of the sea.

Provide a selection of musical instruments for children to use to represent different sea creatures. Display Sea Creature Photos alongside the instruments for children to explore.

Add small world sea creatures and blue jelly to a large activity tray to inspire the children to explore texture.

Focused Vocabulary

Ocean, Sea, Tide, Fish, Dolphin, Seal, Whale, Seahorse, Shark.