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What you need

Test tubes or cups; thin strips of kitchen paper towels; water; food coloring

What to do

Fill the test tubes or cups with different colored water and tell the class you are going to put two ends of the kitchen paper towels into each container of water, creating a chain. Ask the students to predict what might happen.

Scientific concept or lesson

Slowly the color is absorbed into the wet paper towel and travels up to meet with the next color. Students learn about absorbency and color mixing.

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What you need:
4 cups flour or baking soda; 1/2 cup vegetable oil; 1–2 drops of lavender essential oil; tempera paint powder or crushed chalk (optional, for color)

What to do:
In a big plastic container, mix all the ingredients together, grinding the chalk into a powder (if desired) and then invite students to come and explore the “clouds.”

Scientific concept or lesson
Discuss how students are using their senses to explore this material. Can they predict if it will hold its shape? Can it be squashed? Does it bounce back?

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Invite students to put different amounts of sugar into each jar, add a drop of food coloring, and observe what happens. Have them stir until all the sugar is dissolved, then, using the pipettes, have them drop one color solution into another. What happens?

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THE BRAVEST FISH Read Along Aloud Story Book for Children Kids

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The SAG-AFTRA Foundation's Daytime Emmy-nominated, Storyline Online, features celebrated actors reading children's books to inspire a love of reading in millions of children worldwide.

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"Over In The Ocean" read by Jack Hartmann | "Over In The Ocean" written by Jack Hartmann

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Where is Shelly's Hat!   - Animated story about sea animals

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First grade math improves children's understanding of arithmetic, number values, linear measurements, and shape composition. With its appealing games that combine math practice with play, Math Games makes achieving these learning goals fun and enjoyable!

In this grade, students identify patterns, use abstract reasoning, and develop efficient strategies for problem-solving. They also acquire knowledge essential to many real-world situations, such as telling the time or measuring objects and distances. Math Games enables them to hone these skills recommended by the Common Core at the same time as they collect gold, defeat aliens or eat their way up the ocean food chain in our wide selection of games! As they play, users can practice:

Adding and subtracting up to 20

Recognizing key features and parts of various shapes

Putting shapes together to make other shapes

Using and building models

Understanding time

And much more! Have a go at one of our free online games and see how enjoyable and easy it is to review important math knowledge. You can also download printable worksheets or one of our free game apps!

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year 1 math games free practice common core standards counting numberpatterns numberproperties addition subtraction multiplication division fractions measurement comparison geometry positions graphing

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First grade math improves children's understanding of arithmetic, number values, linear measurements, and shape composition. With its appealing games that combine math practice with play, Math Games makes achieving these learning goals fun and enjoyable! In this grade, students identify patterns, use abstract reasoning, and develop efficient strategies for problem-solving.

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Use this to help you write your acrostic poem!

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Write your poem on one of these templates or make your own!

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By · This content may contain affiliate links.

Marbled shaving cream art for kids is a very easy process art activity. What we love about it is how unique every creation is. Even with the same colors and shaving cream each piece of art turns out very different. It's also a great way to create art with young kids.

Since we've been learning about a fish theme, we turned the creations we made into fish, but you can leave them as is or turn them into anything you'd like.

Get a full week of fish theme lesson plans for

Affiliate links included.

To get started we sprayed shaving cream into a pan large enough to fit our paper. Then the kids added drops of food coloring. A little goes a long way so you don't need to add a lot. Also note that food coloring is not washable. Wear play clothes and plan for the possibility of tinted hands for a bit. If you prefer a washable version, you can also use liquid watercolors.

Next we used a toothpick to swirl the food coloring around a bit. You don't need to stir it to much, just let kids blend a little.

Then place your paper onto the mixture and pat it so that all the paper gets shaving cream on it. The squishing of the shaving cream is especially fun for toddlers!

Next you'll want to pick up the paper. Use your fingers or grab with tongs or clothespins if you are trying to be a bit less messy. Lay it onto a flat surface. We use a cookie sheet.

Then it's time to remove the excess shaving cream. We use a squeegee for this step.

The kids love to see their designs revealed as they slowly move the squeegee across the paper. You can repeat these steps multiple times with the same batch of shaving cream. As you do you may need to add extra shaving cream or food coloring, and your pictures will looks different each time as the colors blend more and more.

You can choose whether to display your creations as they are or turn them into something of interest to your child. Like I said before, we've been reading about fish, so we created some tropical fish to make a large ocean scene as we get closer to summer vacation.

The Amazon widget below includes some of the books we've been reading.
Amazon.com Widgets
Visit our ocean theme Pinterest Board for more fish activities and ideas for learning about ocean animals.

Follow Shaunna @ Fantastic Fun and Learning's board Ocean Theme on Pinterest.

Get a Full Week of Fish Theme Learning and Play

Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we've provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.

This set includes active hands-on learning ideas and the following printables:
1) 1-15 Fish and Fish Bowl Counting Mats
2) Uppercase Letter Fish Cards
3) Lowercase Letter Bubble Cards
4) 0-31 Fish Number Cards
5) Fish Patterning and Sorting Cards
6) Fish Roll and Graph Math Game
7) Word Segmenting Fish
8) Shape Fish
9) Fish Word Building Mats
10) Fish Size Ordering and Sorting Cards

Get Your Lesson Plans
Home Preschool Fish Theme Lesson Plans Preschool Classroom Fish Theme Lesson Plans

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Marbled Fish Art for Kids - Fantastic Fun & Learning

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By · This content may contain affiliate links. Marbled shaving cream art for kids is a very easy process art activity. What we love about it is how unique every creation is. Even with the same colors and shaving cream each piece of art turns out very different.

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Gracen and I are lucky enough to have one of her little friends join us for an afternoon of play each Wednesday. They play quite well together, so I put a few things out for them to explore in advance, then step back to let them play, helping communication and sharing happen when needed. We always have a good time together, but the last couple of times I've noticed that together they plow through the activities I've set out (2 minutes of play dough! 1 stroke of paint! 3 minutes of water play!) and then look at me with eager eyes for something more.

I knew I wanted to try something different for today's play date and my thought was that if I set out only one activity - something engaging and encouraging of teamwork - the afternoon may have a calmer vibe to it. I wasn't sure what that activity would look like exactly, but when Jackie of Happy Hooligans shared her dino dig on our Facebook page, I new that I wanted to try something similar. This sort of 'buried treasure' ice play has been on my mental to do list forever, and I knew it would be the perfect way to slow things down a little and allow the munchkins to really become invested in their play.

{this post contains affiliate links}

Though it took a little bit of advanced planning, the activity was a breeze to set up. Using Miss G's collection of miniature ocean creatures, a few plastic aquarium plants, a plastic mixing bowl, tap water, and a few drops of food colouring, I created a 'frozen ocean' by freezing it in layers, adding a few more plants / animals and more water each time.

I also prepped a couple of fun things to help the melting process along - these old glue bottles filled with water and a drop or two of food colouring ...

And some coloured salt which is simply made by shaking table salt and a one or two drops of liquid food colouring in a jar or bag.

Then I set everything out, along with some cutlery and mini tongs, in a great big shallow basin placed on an old shower curtain.

Before getting started, we investigated the frozen ocean a bit and the munchkins pointed out all kinds of cool creatures that needed help 'getting unstuck'.

Armed with their tools, the pair got started on their mission.

The water squirt bottles came out first...

And then came out the salt.

One thing that they quickly learned together was that if you sprinkled some salt on the ice and then quickly washed it away with a stream of water, the salt didn't have enough time to do its job.

With some serious team work, scraping, sprinkling, and spraying, some of the trapped sea creatures began to come loose.

For much of the time, they focused on one very-close-to-being-free creature at a time, moving on to another only when the rescue was complete and proper cheers and celebrations had taken place. Yay for working together!

Every now and then, they'd flip the ice block over to see what was going on on the other side of the ocean, and we were ofter surprised to see some nearly free creatures just needing a little tug to come loose.

Throughout the activity I did fill their water squirters and salt containers up a few times, but I also encouraged them to reuse the water and salt that was at the bottom of the basin and to try using different scraping and chipping techniques too, which they were happy to do.

Besides being super engaging and encouraging of cooperation, the entire process was just so beautiful! The sparkly salt paired with the textured melting ice in a pool of greens and blues... It was gorgeous!

45 minutes after starting the mission, my little rescuers had saved all of the ocean creatures and our ice block was nearly gone. Now I can't wait to do a larger scale version outdoors in the summer...

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Gracen and I are lucky enough to have one of her little friends join us for an afternoon of play each Wednesday. They play quite well together, so I put a few things out for them to explore in advance, then step back to let them play, helping communication and sharing happen when needed.

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Five Little Mermaids | Barefoot Books Singalong

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Port Side Pirates! | Barefoot Books Singalong

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The Singing Mermaid by Julia Donaldson - Children’s Story Read Aloud by This Little Piggy

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Our Planet | Humpback Whales | Clip | Netflix

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Whatever under the sea is, attracts young children especially and makes them curious to learn about sea animals. From Killer whale to crabs our little learners will get to learn sea animals names along with its appearance. The game includes various sea creatures for kids along with sea animals picture to drag the attention of little learners. It's never enough when it comes to learning about sea animals and this game includes a wide range of list of sea animals for preschoolers. The online game also comprises of ocean animal facts for kids along with the names. Children have this attraction towards exploring new stuff and know more about it.

The fascinating graphics will drive youngsters crazy and they would insist you spending more time along learning water animals names and pictures. It includes all the basic Sea animals for kids to expand one's knowledge and make him able to know and learn more about how under water life seems to be. It is the best way to take them on an educational experience loaded with fun and adventure.

This Game has the following list of sea animals facts:

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Learn About Your Favorite Sea Animal With This Online Game

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Whatever under the sea is, attracts young children especially and makes them curious to learn about sea animals. From Killer whale to crabs our little learners will get to learn sea animals names along with its appearance. The game includes various sea creatures for kids along with sea animals picture to drag the attention of little learners.

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Here is a shark craft for kids perfect for an ocean theme or for shark week. This shark activity is perfect for toddlers, preschoolers and up. (Post includes a free shark template!)
*This post was originally published on March 15, 2015 and has since been updated.
We recently celebrated my daughter's 7th birthday with a shark-themed party! My preschooler, Theo, had so much fun helping to prepare for the party and wanted to create some decorations on his own, so I came up with this simple shark suncatcher craft.

This shark craft is perfect for both toddlers and preschoolers and combines fine motor skills with creativity. These make a great shark week craft, summer craft, or can easily be adapted to fit with an ocean theme! (This post contains affiliate links.)

Materials for Shark Suncatcher Craft

Directions for Shark Suncatcher Craft

1. Cut two identical pieces of clear contact paper. (We cut ours to 6 inches x 9 inches.)

2. Cut some sharks out from your gray construction paper. You can print our free shark template onto cardstock, cut out the sharks, and use them as tracers on the gray paper.

Other options for sharks:

Print the sharks directly onto gray paper or gray cardstock and cut them out.

Use shark stickers in place of construction paper sharks.

Use ocean animal stickers to make your suncatcher ocean themed.

3. Temporarily attach one piece of contact paper to the surface you'll be working on. I like to use poster putty to stick it to the table. Be sure the paper you'll be peeling off is on top.

4. Peel off the paper revealing the sticky-side of the contact paper.

5. Place squares of tissue paper all over the sticky contact paper creating an ocean.

6. When you satisfied with your tissue paper ocean, it's time to add some sharks! Place them anywhere in your tissue paper ocean.

7. Peel off the backing to the second piece of contact paper and carefully place it sticky-side down over the shark suncatcher. Smooth it with your hands.

8. Trim the edges of the suncatcher, removing any overhanging pieces of contact paper.

9. Hang it in your window and enjoy!

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Shark Crafts for Preschoolers: Shark Suncatcher - Buggy and Buddy

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Here is a shark craft for kids perfect for an ocean theme or for shark week. This shark activity is perfect for toddlers, preschoolers and up. (Post includes a free shark template!) *This post was originally published on March 15, 2015 and has since been updated.

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Create: Children create an oyster shell by folding the paper plate in half.  Thread beads (pearls) on pipe cleaner. Then twist the ends to create an O shaped bracelet. Hide (we taped it in) the bracelet inside the oyster shell.

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Read the facts and click on the correct sea animal

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A game for preschoolers about animals in the ocean.

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TRAFFIC LIGHT POPSICLE - Ice lolly - healthy kids frozen fruit ice block pop with strawberry

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Try baking these biscuit with Bigg Cook, Little Cook.

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Big Cook Little Cook | Delicious Fancy Flowers | Food Fun | Wizz Friends

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Do some descriptive writing on this template.

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Choose one challenge and try it out!

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Try using rice to make these sandcastles for lunch!

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Big Cook Little Cook | Making Veggie Sandcastles | Food Fun | Wizz Friends

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Use the Word Mat below to help you with your writing.

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Play a word game to learn and practise more underwater animals vocabulary.

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Choose a challenge to complete

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Based on the Letters and Sounds ‘Buried Treasure’ game. Aimed at children aged between 4 & 7yrs.

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Try this BBC Lesson about Antartica, watch the videos and complete the lesson. Some videos are restricted to the UK.