A few weeks ago we did some “Under the Sea”-themed activities. Here is an overview of what we got up to!
Tropical Fish Decorating – using a range of household items
Fishing Game with Counting and Sorting
Seaside Sensory/Small World Play
Discovery Bottle – I have seen discovery/sensory bottles before, but never made one myself. As we had an old empty bottle to hand, as well as a few appropriate bits and pieces, I thought I would give it a go. To make it, I took an empty plastic bottle and filled it halfway with water. I then added some food colouring (enough to make a deep blue colour; it ended up being a lot, probably about a quarter of the little bottle), a lot of sequins and a lot of glitter, as well as a few drops of glycerine (the glycerine helps slow the fall of the glitter through the water, preventing it from falling too rapidly). I then carried on filling the bottle with water (right up to the brim) and glued the bottle lid on with hot glue from a glue gun. A and E were mesmerised with it (briefly)!
Shaving Foam “Sea” Painting – For this I added some paint to a roasting tin full of shaving foam and got A to stir it with a lollipop stick as much as she liked. Once she had had enough we took a piece of card and pressed it into the tin on top of the shaving foam. We then scraped of the excess shaving foam using the lollipop stick to reveal an amazing swirly blue pattern underneath that looked like rippling water!

The remaining shaving foam even led into some spontaneous messy play!

Under the Sea “Stained Glass” Pictures – For these, I glued a piece of blue tissue paper to a sheet of transparency paper (I have had these hanging around for ages and wanted to use them up). Then (very very nervously) I let A and E loose with sharpies. They drew what they imagined to be under the sea!

Water Play – We did lots and lots of this!
Visit to an Aquarium – Because we obviously had to include this! Especially as we were visiting Hull!
Visit to the cinema to see Finding Dory – Again, we just had to include this…