Ocean Water

This months theme with Mother Goose Time is Ocean Commotion.  I absolutely love the ocean, so I think this month will be even more fun than last month, if that's possible.  Our first day we talked about ocean water.  To start off I gave the girls the blue color bird for the month and they had to fly to the world map and find something blue.  We looked at the map and how much of it is blue ocean. 

The girls pretended to swim to their seats and then made their name tags.  I put the name tags under a sheet and the girls had to dive under it and swim to their name.  They loved doing this so much that I wound up leaving the sheet out for them to play with later on in the day. 

We talked about what lives underwater and looked at the theme poster.  Every month Mother Goose Time sends a cute theme poster with look and find magnifying glasses.  There are fun activities written on the back of the magnifiers and the girls really seem to love this monthly tool.

Next the girls pretended to be different animals moving through the ocean.  They were dolphins leaping over the ocean, eels slithering through the ocean, fish swimming under the ocean, etc.

leaping dolphins

Next I read Why the Sea is Salty, which is a Philippian folktale available in the member resources section online.  After I read it Addie retold the story to Elli using the story telling set. 

Then we did the science activity that was provided.  The girls each got a cup with sugar water, saltwater, and plain water. 

First they smelled them to see if there was a difference

then they tasted them

Obviously they did not like the saltwater.  We talked about how the ocean is made of saltwater, and what it would taste like.  Saltwater is also more dense than regular water, making things float easier.  To show this I poured 2 cups of water and added an egg to each.  They both sank to the bottom.  Then I added salt to one of them and the egg floated to the top.  Both girls thought this was neat and tried pushing on the egg to see if they could make it sink.

The girls also worked on measuring the temperature of a warm bowl of water. Then they worked together to get the temperature to drop.

To finish up the day the girls danced to the dance n beats dvd and completed one of the activities provided in the dance n beats book.  They listened to ocean commotion, and every time a word started with o they made a circle on their paper. 

Day 1 was so much fun and was packed with so many great activities that even after all that the girls didn't want to stop. 

An InLinkz Link-up