O is for Ocean and Octopus

As summer is officially here I thought I would share some fun ideas to go with Ocean and Octopus. We finished our Oo: Octopus/Ocean unit a couple of months ago and I never blogged about it, as I have been terrible at getting my weekly end-of-week posts up lately. 

Unit 9: Octopus

Words to Remember: Even the Octopus Praises the Lord

We started our unit with a fun O Muffin Tin.

Even Harold had one. 

We had made an Octopus poem activity 3 years ago.

The girls painted the bottom blue to represent the ocean. Then I cut out a "body" and some tentacles and glued them on. I attached Velcro to the body and the back of the tentacles so they could attach them as we said the poem. 

 I had saved it in my O folder, and the girls had fun with it during our Circle Time. Of course, now Tabitha and Amelia can actually read the poem themselves. 

Of course, now the girls think it looks like a spider. 

We moved on to make hand octopuses as suggested in the MFW teacher manual. They traced their four fingers, then moved them over and traced them again to make 8, then they drew on a body and cut it out. 

I decided these would be added to an Ocean mural we would complete during this unit.

I also made them an Ocean dessert with Blue Jello, goldfish crackers and bananas for shark fins. 

When we were doing our O lessons 3 years ago, I also found this cute fine motor skills idea. 

I drew my own octopus and added little circles for the octopus's suction cups or suckers. I placed it on a shoe box lid tray with a small cup of Cheerios. The girls were to match the cereal to the o's on the octopus. 

 This year I just made some photo copies of the original one and let the children use it for an activity. This time they got to color their own and glue on the Cheerios.

(Or eat some Cheerios, as the case may be.)

We continued working on our mural during the 2 weeks we did the O unit. We dyed some shell pasta to add to the ocean floor. 

Here is what you need for dyeing pasta.

Zippy bags, rubbing alcohol, food coloring, pasta and wax paper. 

You add the noodles to the zippy bag with 1 teaspoon of rubbing alcohol and 5 drops of food coloring. Then shake the pasta around until it is covered sufficiently and soaked in.

Pour the pasta onto the wax paper and let dry.

Once the pasta was dry we added some to our murals. We glued salt on the bottom to represent the sand, then we glued some shells on. We did have a problem with the sand and shells falling off and needing a bit more glue. 

We also added 3 things of coral, 4 fish, and 6 seahorses. I wanted to add something different for each number up through 8 (for the octopus) but just couldn't think of what else to add on. I did have the older girls put 2 seahorses on each bit of coral for a bit of an early division/multiplication lesson.

This was the second fishy meal for the unit. 

And I found this cute sidewalk chalk for them to use.

And this is my attempt at Octopus Pancakes. Need to work on this a bit more. 

 For our Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen time we made this Octopus in the Ocean Pudding Pie. 

I found white chocolate flavored pudding that was white when made, instead of vanilla which comes out yellow. I was then able to dye it blue for the water. The graham cracker crust was to represent the ocean floor. Unfortunately it fell and broke, so I had to piece it back together. The octopus was made with an apple, bananas and mini chocolate chips. 

 One problem with waiting so long to post about a unit is that I forget which books we enjoyed. There are some really cute Octopus books out there, both fiction picture books and non fiction books. We learned a lot about octopuses this year.

One thing I had wanted to do, but didn't get to, was to make a Ocean Sensory Bin. Though we didn't make one, I have several pinned in my Ideas for MFW K: Octopus/Ocean board. Here is the link to that board (as I can't find a way to embed them like I used to).
http://pinterest.com/kewkew34/ideas-for-mfw-k-octopusocean/

In addition to Blogging Through the Alphabet, I am linking to:

And a couple of new linkies: