Littles Learning Link Up: Under the Sea Unit: Hermit Crab Lesson

Littles Learning Link Up is back on Tuesday!!

Each month you will find:

• Posts where I share what I have been up to with my elementary-age children and the preschoolers I work with at our homeschool co-op (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).
• The occasional round up post.

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme.  Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up. 

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

Here's a peek at what we have been up to in our homeschool.

Unfortunately we didn't get as much done last week as I would have liked. We were dealing with a stomach bug that kept making stops on different family members. We focused mainly on getting math done and working on geography with Let's Go Geography. Tabitha has continued reading ahead in her history reading. She's several weeks ahead of us now. 

Tabitha is also reading about George Washington with the book from YWAM Publishing that we are reviewing. I started reading it to the other children and we are going to start using the unit study that we also received. Additionally, I have started a lapbook about Benjamin Franklin from Home School in the Woods. This is mainly with the younger two children, but I am having the older children listen to the story. 

I'm working on reading comprehension with Hannah. We are using the Reading Comprehension Program from PRIDE Reading Program. That review will be posting this week.

Moving on to our preschool lesson:

We continued with our Under the Sea unit by focusing on hermit crabs for the next two weeks.

We read the book A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle.

I searched for ideas for hermit crab crafts online. Because we did the handprint fish, I thought it would be cute to make handprint hermit crabs as well. There were several similar ideas, so I am not exactly sure who came up with it first. However, I really liked the idea I saw over at I Heart Craft Things, where she added the friends to the craft. I  used some of her ideas, and tweaked them as I usually do.

Handprint Hermit Crab Craft

Here are the supplies you need:

Light blue construction paper

Small paper plate
Orange, brown, green, blue, white, and pink construction paper

Red pipe cleaners

wiggle eyes

red acrylic paint

school glue

crayons

Black permanent marker

gray marker

paintbrush

q-tip

watercolor paints

 First, I prepped the friends at home. I cut out all the needed pieces for the sea anemone, starfish, coral, snail, sea urchin, and lantern fish. I actually surprised myself by being able to draw my own version of the lantern fish.

After singing our two fishy songs from the previous week, I read the book. Then we painted the children's hands red for the hermit crab body. While they dried,  the children used the permanent marker to draw on the spiral and then they painted the shell with the watercolor paints.

The children went to have snack and gym. When they returned, we glued the shell and handprint to the blue paper. We used the school glue because I figured glue sticks wouldn't hold really well. We also added the pipe cleaner as eyes stems and added on wiggle eyes at the ends. Then we went through each month of the year as a review and talked about what friend the hermit crab met that month.

You can see details over at I Heart Crafty Things for how she made each of the friends. As I said, I did make a few change. For instance, I couldn't find my tissue paper, so the sea anemone was made entirely of construction paper. And we used glitter as sand on the bottom of the paper. Plus we used the gray marker to draw pebbles around the crab.

Here are their finished crafts:

The second week they made Hermit Crab lapbooks. 

How humans decorate their houses, compared to how the hermit crab decorated his. I thought it would be a fun way to review the order of the months and when the friends joined him.

I found this poem online:

And then we compared things crabs have, humans have, and we both have/do.

These are the songs we sing:

"One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Once I caught a fish alive." 

Plus a song that goes to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus." We found a video for this song online, but I don't have signal at the camp, so we didn't watch it. I just wrote down the words. There were five different ocean animals. And, of course, I added motions.

The shark in the ocean goes chomp, chomp, chomp, 

Chomp, chomp, chomp

Chomp, chomp, chomp

The shark in the ocean goes chomp, chomp, chomp

CHOMP....CHOMP....CHOMP!

Same pattern for the following:

The turtle in the ocean goes snap, snap, snap...

The crab in the ocean goes click, click, click...

The jellyfish in the ocean goes wibble wobble wibble

The fish in the ocean goes swish, swish, swish (though the one girls wanted to do, The fish in the ocean goes swimmy, swimmy, swimmy...)

We will be continuing the Under the Sea ocean for at least another couple of weeks. Our next animal is the seahorse

Here are a couple of things I would like to share with you:

Fishy Under the Sea Literature and Craft Round Up

St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Fun Round Up

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there was 1 wonderful post linked up. 

Please, don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

This week's featured post is:

Gale from Imaginative Homeschool shared St. Patrick's Day Free Faves.

Join the Party!

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up.

Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our school time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

No button currently, and there won't be one until I can figure it out seeing as Photobucket has changed things. Feel free to still share the picture in place of the button. Just link it to my Littles Learning Link Up permalink please.

I am sharing over at

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter