O is for Ocean and so much more!

We had a fantastic day of preschool today! I don't know who was looking forward to it more, Samantha or me ;)

We started off with circle time, during which we talked about a few words that begin with O. Then we sang a few rounds of Old MacDonald. Next we talked about opposites and read a book called Animal Opposites, which has sliders that show animals with opposite qualities. The kids really enjoyed doing the sliders.

Next, we headed to the kitchen to make O prints using cups, lids, and straws (although the straws tended to suck up too much paint leaving just spots behind.) This was just as messy and even more popular than I anticipated.

Then we read Good Thing You're Not an Octopus and made hand print octopuses.

A group photo - I couldn't decide which to go with, so I just uploaded both. It is so hard getting four kids to look at you without funny expressions on any of their faces...

After washing up we had a nice healthy snack of oranges, which went over very well.

Next we talked about oceans. I used our globe to show the kids where the different oceans are. We read part of a book that teaches about oceans, but the kids were getting restless. So, we Just spent a few minutes talking about creatures that live in the ocean. Then we started our aquarium project by coloring clip art of oceanic animals. For anyone who is curious, I made the aquariums a few days before using cereal boxes, transparency, and black duct tape.

This craft seemed to require an intermission, so we had our not-so-healthy snack of Oreos at this point. I was able to use this time to cut out the clip art animals in preparation for the next step.

Then we proceeded to tape toothpicks to the back of our fish. This demanded my presence in four places at once, but they started to do it more independently once I put tape on several toothpicks for them.

With the animals held in place with bits of play-doh, we then filled our aquariums with some rocks and sea shells.

Try to ignore the Oreo faces, I didn't think to clean them until after pictures....

We finished our day with a quick game of Dive Under the Ocean. We placed some small marine life under a sheet and we held up a blue sheet while one of the kids would "dive" underneath to retrieve an animal. It was a good day and we had O so much fun :)