Preschool Co-op

So a small group of mamas and I get together a couple times a month to do "preschool." It's very light-hearted and the kids really have a great time. Today, we got together for the first time since our Christmas break and we talked about oceans. Ollie and I have been exploring this topic a bit and he is really excited about it. I bought a map at the local learning store and he is all about it. Of course, when he sees maps in books he often wants to find where we live, and where Africa and China are. Strange, but hey whatever floats your boat buddy.

 He knows there are 5 oceans and can name "Southern." For those of you who do not know, at some point in the recent future, the Antarctic Ocean was renamed the Southern ocean. I was very confused when I first opened our new map and did a quick google search to discover it had been renamed. I am not sure why.  Here is Ollie on a previous day, labeling the oceans.

When "his friends" arrived, we started by looking at the map and talking about how many oceans there are and what their names are. Then we read The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor.The book is really neat and has a lot of information. It proved to be a bit long for a group of preschoolers although I think most would have loved it sitting on their own mom's lap reading it. 

We then moved to the table to make sea urchins. We made them by taking play-doh and sticking a bunch of toothpicks into it. Tonight at dinner, Ollie told Bob that the urchins have those spikes to protect themselves from predators. Well done kid!

                       Rex with his urchin

Ollie and Quinn

After the sea urchins, we made "ocean bags." Each child got a gallon ziploc bag and a bottle of hair gel. After squeezing in the hair gel, the kids added some blue food coloring, and glitter. Ollie is like me, if he sees something sparkly, he gets distracted. Before I knew what happened, he yacked off the lid of the glitter and dowsed himself with it. He then decided to try to brush it off himself (sigh). We did get a bit of glitter inside the bag. The kids then used the bags to practice writing letters. For some reason, I took no pictures of this. Go figure. 

While the big kids worked on there ocean bags, I had the brilliant idea of letting the  babies play in a sensory bin I had made. Inside, I put shredded blue paper, shredded cellophane, and various sea creatures we have around the house as well as a few I purchased at the dollar store. This was a huge hit! The only problem was the aftermath. I now remember why I don't buy Easter grass. It is a pain! It was from one end of the house to the other. 

For a snack, I gave the kids a real wholesome one! They each received four calm shells with numbers on them. They had to place that number of marshmallows on each one. Ollie quickly gobbled his as soon as he put a few on his first one. You'd like he was deprived. 

Hannah and her clams

We did a few other not as fun activities that the kids seemed to like. All in all, it was a good day. The kids had a blast playing together and I think they learned a thing or two.