Sea Week at Buckle My Shoe (Part 2)
To extend on our Sea Week focus, we planned and set up a variety of different learning experiences to engage and expand our little ones’ knowledge in this area.
Children of all ages enjoyed being involved in painting and creating our big wall display of the sea. Our younger tamariki spent time decorating pictures of sea life, while some of our older learners tapped into their creative artistic skills as they drew their own pictures of whales, fish, dolphins and other sea creatures. It was amazing to hear the discussions and see all the details coming to life in these drawings. Tino pai to mahi, great work, well done!
Who doesn’t love sensory experiences? Outside we used our water trough to recreate an under the sea themed set up but as our little ones moved closer, they noticed that the sea animals were trapped in blue ice. Wow!
Using their hands they enjoyed feeling the coldness from the ice and looking closely to see what sea animals were trapped inside. Their focus was on melting the ice to free the animals and they did this by using a variety of different techniques.
Inside, a fresh batch of blue play dough was prepared and available for our tamariki to recreate different sea animals and scenarios. Play dough is a fantastic manipulative material for little hands and helps strengthen finger muscles as your little one squeezes, rolls, pats and moulds it into different things.
Alongside the play dough, we brought out some of our pretend sea creatures and some of our little ones created their own story scenarios using the play dough and a sea animal of their choice.
We always want to provide our tamariki with opportunities to engage in real-life situations, where possible. One of our awesome teachers brought in a special tray of treasures found on the beach and this was offered to our little ones to explore.
Each child had a picture of a particular item that can be found on the beach and they then had to sort through the treasures to find the matching item.
Some of these pictures were of rubbish, Spinifex grass seeds, a sea sponge, feathers, mangrove seeds, crab shell, fan shells and seaweed. Our little one that had the picture of rubbish, found a piece of blue plastic hidden on the tray whilst the one who had to find Spinifex grass seeds described them as being spikey and smelly. The one with the feather picture managed to find a bird wing on the tray and the child with the crab shell found a small piece of crab shell hiding on the tray. Our little one looking for the fan shell found an enormous scallop shell still covered in wet sand whilst her friend found a Neptune's necklace – which is a type of seaweed ideal for squirting.
Our little ones were then shown how to connect some broken parts to make a kina papa (cake urchin) which evenly breaks into 5 pieces. Our tamariki enjoyed having turns at putting these together – just like a real life puzzle.
As the week came to an end, we revisited what we had learnt from our group discussions about being kaitiaki (caretakers) of the sea, the Great Waste Race and all the other fun sea-themed experiences we had. Our tamariki's knowledge and understandings were then captured and documented upon on our wonderful wall display for all to see.