Under the Sea

Under the Sea is another very popular topic and one that is easily incorporated into the nursery/infant years settings. There could even be adaptations and activities within this topic applicable throughout the primary school, e.g. conservation. I have added my planning mindmap below and will detail all the activities Robbie and I did.

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Handprint Fish/Octopus and Seascape Free Painting – resources: plain paper, paint.

We originally started this activity with the intention to create handprint fish for an under the sea picture later in the week, but Robbie had so much fun that he decided he wanted to paint his own Seascape picture for his fish right then and there. For the fish, we simply painted Robbie’s hands and stamped them on the paper with his fingers together and thumb sticking up to give the shape of fins and tails. Once they were dry we painted on eyes, suckers and scales. He then enjoyed some free painting and created a lovely background for his sea life.

Water Play and Exploring Shells – resources: bowls filled with warm water/water and washing up liquid, shells (ours were bought from amazon as we couldn’t get to a beach – lockdown 2020 -, but collecting shells would have been much more fun), sea creature toys.

This was a nice introductory activity. We filled bowls with water and washing up liquid then put out the shells and sea creatures we had for Robbie to play with. He enjoyed washing them all and moving them from the water into the bowl with the washing up liquid and back. We talked about the different animals and what they were called and talked about the shape and size of the shells and what they felt like.

We revisited this activity many times throughout the week, also adding in Robbie’s other toy animals, inside and outside. The best part of outside water play is being able to spill the water out everywhere and jump in the puddles though.

Gelli Baff Under the Sea Imaginative Play – resources: Gelli Baff , bowl with water, animal bath toys, sea creature toys, shells, assorted utensils.

Gelli Baff is great fun and perfect for sensory play. The packaging comes with clear instructions on how to use the granules and if you read them properly then they could last for a good few uses if using them in small containers.

I, however, didn’t read the instructions and ended up using far too many for my small bowl. This resulted in solid blue globs of Gelli Baff and not much to play with so we decided to move our activity into the bath where we could get the balance between granules and water right. Once we had achieved this we had great fun playing with Robbie’s bath toys and his under the sea creatures in his bath.

Sea Creature Fork Biscuits – Recipe here, sea creature toys.

For these tasty snacks, we used a straightforward Fork biscuit recipe, but instead of using a fork to make the impressions on the top of the biscuits, we used Robbie’s plastic sea creatures. This was great fun and really unique.

They looked great before we put them in the over, but as they spread slightly during cooking they lost the shape of the creatures a little.

Sea Creature Messy Play – resources: toy sea creatures/bath toys, bowls, messy play materials (jelly, Cheerios, oats, sand, water, shaving foam), assorted utensils.

We made some jelly the day before and used a large bowl to set a third of the jelly mixture. We put some oats and Cheerios into bowls, brought out the sea creature toys and some utensils for Robbie to use and let Robbie have free play with these materials.

While Robbie loved this activity he preferred eating the jelly and Cheerios to actually using the toys to play in them.

Salt-dough Sea Creatures – Recipe here, toy sea creatures, glass, baking tray, greaseproof paper.

Salt-dough is great fun and super for making long-lasting crafts. We used Robbie’s sea creature toys to press into the dough leaving little sea creature fossils. We used a glass to cut these out and baked them in the oven until they were dry. After they had cooled we painted them bright colours.

Robbie loves to take these out, play with them and talk about the different animals.

Sea Creature Play-dough Stamping – resources: play-dough, sea creature toys.

This activity was a great way to explore the different shapes of the sea creatures we had. Robbie rolled or squashed out his playdough, then pressed some of the sea creatures into it to see what marks they would leave.

We spoke about the names of the different animals, what they looked like, what noises they made, where we might find them and what shapes they made.