Monday, July 11, 2011

Theme Week - Ocean Week


This was one of those weeks that I had a lot planned and we just didn't get to it all. The kids each picked an animal to focus on, but honestly we were not able to do as much with this as I had planned.  S picked the whale, C the hammerhead shark and J the penguin. We had a lot of fun reading ocean books, watching ocean movies, doing some ocean crafts and finishing up with a visit to the Dallas World Aquarium.

Some of the picture books we read:
Into the A, B Sea by Deborah Lee Rose, pictures by Steve Jenkins
The Deep Blue Sea: A Book of Colors: story by Audrey Wood, pictures by Bruce Wood
Dory Story by Jerry Pallotta, pictures by David Biedrzycki
Fidgety Fish and Friends by Paul Bright, pictures by Ruth Galloway

Some fun non-fiction books:
Wish for A Fish: All About Sea Creatures by Bonnie Worth, illustrated by Aristides Ruiz
A Whale of a Tale: All About Porpoises, Dolphins, and Whales by Bonnie Worth, illustrated by Aristides Ruiz and Joe Mathieu

Movies we watched:
Disney's Oceans, Bill Nye the Science Guy: Oceanography (My kids love this series. It is sometimes hard to find, but our library has a great collection of educational movies), The Magic School Bus Catches a Wave: Wet All Over (My kids also love anything Magic School Bus) and IMAX: Dolphins.

I loved the art project we did for this week.  I found a great book called Hand-Print Animal Art by Carolyn Carreiro.  We first painted our backgrounds and the next day added our animals.  I thought they turned out really neat--a bit of impressionistic color blending in the background.