Fishing for Goldfish

In the past, this is how I have been able to get Avery to eat vegetable soup - we go 'Fishing for Goldfish'! Works every time! Even tho we do consume a lot of the crackers. And why not go fishing during Ocean's Week!

Where are the oceans & Fingerprint Fish

Where exactly are the oceans?

We do spend quite a lot of time looking at maps in our family, so this was an easy question for our son. But, I still thought a ocean vs. land coloring project was fun. We colored the 'ocean' are very hard with crayon (which he loved) and then we watercolored over the globe with green watercolor.

This is Part 1 of our Fingerprint Fish.

First we picked out a fish picture and printed it out. Then we got out the watercolors. He had a lot of fun doing thumbprints with the watercolor paints to make scales. We have not used watercolors as finger paints before.

Ocean Week Book List

This week is Ocean Week!!!

Here are the books we borrowed from the local library. I try and put holds on the books we want to check out in advance, so my search for theme related books is done primarily online rather than in the library. This week it was a little difficult to get the books I wanted, but I think we have a few good ones... and a few okay ones :)

The Seashore Book - by Charlotte Zolotow: This is a beautiful book that does a wonderful job describing a day at the beach... makes me want a vacation!

Somewhere in the Ocean by Jennifer Ward and T.J. Marsh: A great rhyming and counting book about sea creatures. Bright and beautiful pictures and fun facts at the end.

My Visit to the Aquarium by Aliki: This story follows a little boy as he visits an aquarium. It has a lot of facts in it, maybe a few too many for a 3 year old's attention span - but the pictures are worth it.

The Underwater Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta: This book has fantastic illustrations for sea creatures living in the tropics from A to Z - watch out for the shark!

The Octopus by Denys Cazet: So this book is cute, but a little different. About a Grandpa who tells a scary tub story to his grandchild involving an octopus.

Seashore Treasure by Stan & Jan Berenstain: The Berenstain Bears are on a seashore treasure hunt and find a treasure of their own.

Fish School by Nancy Poydar: A story about a boy and his favorite goldfish who take a class trip to the aquarium.

Ocean World Sticker Book by Maurice Pledger: This last book we purchased at Costco as a fun activity to incorporate during the week.

Rainbows

We worked on rainbows today. We used watercolors to paint a rainbow on some butcher/freezer paper.

Then we ate a rainbow! Our cooking project this week included a trip to the store to find fruits with the same color as the rainbow. Fun, easy & healthy!

Wind

Today's activities were based around wind.

Our first craft we made a kid sized wind sock out of a toilet paper roll, construction paper, and some leftover ribbon.

Avery decorated the paper as much as he wanted, and then we glued it to the toilet paper roll. Next we punched holes in the windsock to attach ribbons as the streamers. We also used a chopstick as the handle. It looks a little rough around the edges, but he LOVED it and had a blast playing with it in the yard today.

Next we made 'wind' paintings. I watered down some white tempera paint, and put globs of it on dark blue construction paper. Avery then blew through a straw, creating 'wind' to make funny shapes.

We tried blowing far away from the paper and very close to it to see the difference in how it spread the paint. And yes, some did get splattered across the table with BIG wind gusts... so maybe I watered down the tempera paint a little too much!

Next we played a game that I saw in a magazine a while back. We battled cotton balls!

Our playing field consisted of an old box from Costco and some decorations to make it (slightly) resemble a playing field. We put a cotton ball on the center line, and each of us had a straw to try and blow the cotton ball into the other person's goal. This held his attention a lot longer than I thought it would - after 30 minutes I was pretty done playing the game, but he still wanted to play :) So this one will stick around the house for a bit longer when we are looking for something to entertain us!

More Clouds

Today we worked on crafting with clouds as part of Weather Week.

For our first craft we concentrated on the letter 'C' - for clouds!

First we cut a letter 'C' out of scrap cardboard. Then I had Avery paste it to a piece of 'sky' blue paper. Next he spread glue all over the 'C' and glued cotton balls to the 'C' to look like a cloud.

Then I wrote the word 'CLOUDS' on the top of the paper with a white crayon and asked Avery to write the word too - I thought he did an awesome job... especially since he often is intimidated to write out his words. It is a little hard to see in the photo.

Next we did some cloud paintings!

We used dark blue construction paper and painted clouds with a cotton ball using white tempera paint. I also had Avery spell out 'clouds' using sticky foam letters. He picked out the letters and put them in the right order by himself.

Clouds

Today was all about clouds.

I found this great picture showing the different types of clouds and what their names are.

And so, we spent a fun day cloud watching and trying to match the clouds up. We had a great weather day with lots of clouds - sunny to the west with high clouds, and very cloudy to the east by the mountains. I was amazed at how well a 3 year old could pronounce and recognize the various types of clouds.