As children learn about their local environment, neighborhoods, and communities, they may wonder what other environments exist in the world. One of our planet's largest environments, the ocean, affects us all in positive ways. It provides us with food, climate regulation, and economic progress, among other things.
While all children do not have access to or see the ocean, coral reefs, and marine life on a daily basis, most children can relate to this environment through a visit to a public aquarium, museum, pet store, or home aquarium. Even if your program operates miles from the coastline, you can encourage children’s wonder and curiosity about ocean environments through stories and hands-on learning activities.
The ocean-themed activities you will find in this article are perfect for children ages 3-5 years old. They will help children think critically and creatively while building a solid foundation in early mathematics and literacy skills. To make it easier for you to implement these activities in your classroom, we've included a list of materials and idea starters to help you enrich the play happening in your classroom learning centers.
As a leader in early childhood education for more than 50 years, we understand the importance of classroom activities that are founded on research and support educational best practices.
The activities in this article were inspired by the Gryphon House books Math in Minutes: Easy Activities For Children Ages 4-8, Literacy Play: Over 300 Dramatic Play Activities That Teach Pre-Reading Skills, and the pre-K curriculum Connect4Learning. We also categorize these activities by classroom learning center to make lesson planning quick and easy!
Once your classroom coral reef construction is complete, work together as a group to create a story about a fish living in the reef and what adventures it might go on. As the children provide elements for the story, use a large sheet of paper or whiteboard to document it so the children can associate written words with the words they hear.
Encourage the children to create a story that follows a sequence of events, starting with the fish waking up in the morning and ending with the fish going to sleep at night.
The books Math in Minutes: Easy Activities For Children Ages 4-8 and Literacy Play: Over 300 Dramatic Play Activities That Teach Pre-Reading Skills inspired this activity. These books also provide more activities that facilitate the development of early literacy and math skills.
Create several "decoration prompt cards" encouraging children to use specific shapes and item amounts when decorating their hermit crab home. These cards will help children improve their ability to recognize numbers and shapes and build their literacy skills while reading the prompt. Ask the children to count aloud as they add materials to their shells to strengthen their number knowledge. Here is an example of what your decoration prompt cards might look like:
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Add 5 ☆ and 3 Δ to the shell |
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Add 5 blue ♡ to the shell |
This activity was inspired by the book Math in Minutes: Easy Activities For Children Ages 4-8. It also includes math activities that help children grasp concepts such as measuring, sorting, patterning, problem-solving, and more.
As the children uncover alphabet manipulatives while exploring the "ocean," ask them to identify an ocean animal whose name starts with that same letter. For example, if a child uncovers the letter "O," the ocean animal they could name is an octopus. As children uncover ocean animal toys, have them identify the first letter of the animal's name. This discovery activity provides an exciting way to help children improve their letter recognition and sounds.
While the children are exploring the "ocean" and discovering the animal toys within, encourage them to explore the characteristics of each animal and how they move around in the water. How many fins does a fish have? How many tentacles does the octopus have? Using a blank sheet of paper, create a graph that documents the children's findings. Once the activity is complete, compare the animals to see which have the same or differing characteristics. Here is an example of what that graph could look like:
| Fins | Tentacles | Flippers | |
| Octopus | 8 | ||
| Sea Lion | 4 | ||
| Dolphin | 3 |
This activity was inspired by the book Math in Minutes: Easy Activities For Children Ages 4-8 and Literacy Play: Over 300 Dramatic Play Activities That Teach Pre-Reading Skills. These books also provide more activities that facilitate the development of early literacy and math skills.
Start by reading the book Pattern Fish by Trudy Harris. If you do not have this book in your classroom, that is fine. This activity aims to introduce children to the concept of creating patterns. Give each child a blank sentence strip and materials in varying colors, shapes, or sizes. The children can use fish toys, paint dot markers, torn paper, or blocks to create patterns on their sentence strips.
Encourage critical thinking and open communication during this activity by asking the children these questions as they create fishy patterns:
Creating patterns and sorting objects by shape and color is a great way to introduce children to foundational math concepts. By providing prompts that describe additional patterns they might create, you can help children think beyond their typical ABAB and ABCABC pattern-making.
This activity was inspired by the book Literacy Play: Over 300 Dramatic Play Activities That Teach Pre-Reading Skills. This book also provides additional literacy-based activity ideas, such as Grocery Store, Pet Shop, and Gardener.
You now have a few ocean-themed activity ideas to help children grasp early literacy and math skills in fun and engaging ways. Use the activities above as inspiration while planning your weekly lessons, and feel free to make changes to better suit the needs of the children in your care.
Ready to add these activities to your lesson plans? Download a PDF version of this article to quickly and easily refer to the materials, activity details, and enrichment opportunities.