Tag Archives: Ocean

Animals of the Ocean for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

If you haven’t been introduced to our Montessori wall map and quiet book yet, you can read all about it here. This post isn’t actually for a continent… It’s for the oceans! Every continent (and the oceans) will have landmarks and animals. Some, like Europe, have more landmarks than animals. The oceans have a lot of labels, 9 animals and one island landmark.

Overview and Map Patterns • Africa • Antarctica • Asia • Europe
North America • Oceans • South America

Those of you who follow along on Facebook or Instagram have been seeing my progress as I’ve worked on the ocean animals. I’m so exciting to be working on this project! This will be an amazing resource for Jax throughout his school years. Yes, I am giving you all my patterns and printables for free! If you’d like to contribute, visit my support page. School items off of Jax’s Amazon wishlist always help!

Materials I Used

The Pattern (see the first post for the main patterns)

Felt from American Felt & Craft – lilac [purple], cilantro [green], stone [beige], pomegranate [pink], white, salt & pepper [dark gray], elephant [med gray], black and gray. From Benzie Design – swan [blue] for the water.

Hook & Loop – I used white snag-free Velcro on the backs of all these pieces. I used aqua blue hook where the animals attach to the ocean.

I updated this 8/6/13 to add one more ocean Velcro piece in the Pacific near Hawaii!

Other Things: Felt glue to tack down the pieces before sewing, printer fabric for the continent label, embroidery floss in colors to match the felt and micro tip scissors.

Sewing the Pieces

For all of the animals & landmarks, I started by gluing the pieces down to a scrap of background felt with a very light amount of felt glue. I glue several animals at a time to give them time to dry. I sewed them down, trimmed the background and cut a matching backing piece. I sewed snag-free Velcro to the back and sewed both sides together with a blanket stitch.

Sea Star: (Felt used: lilac purple for the star and swan blue for the background) I glued down the sea star then sewed all around it. Using long straight stitches, I sewed a starburst in the center.

Killer Whale: (Felt used: black for the body, white for the markings and swan blue for the background) For the killer whale (orca), I glued the black body down first, then the white markings and the fin. I stitched around all the edges.

Sea Turtle: (Felt used: cilantro green for the shell, stone beige for the soft parts and swan blue for the background) For the sea turtle, I glued the soft parts of the turtle down, then glued the shell on top. I sewed around the edges of the soft parts. On the shell, I used a lighter green thread and stitched all around the edge using longer stitches than I usually do. Then I used long stitches to make a shell pattern. View the image full size to use as a guide.

Tiger Shark: (Felt used: elephant med gray, white for the teeth and swan blue for the background) For the shark, I glued down the teeth first, then the body and fin. I sewed around all the edges, made some long, parallel stitches for gills and a French knot eye. I made some white zig zag stitches over his teeth.

Sperm Whale: (Felt used: salt & pepper dark gray and swan blue for the background) For the sperm whale, I glued down the body and fin. I sewed around all the edges, made a long stitch for his mouth and a French knot eye.

Dolphin: (Felt used: elephant med gray and swan blue for the background) For the dolphin, I glued down the body and fin. I sewed around all the edges, made a long stitch for her mouth and a French knot eye.

Beluga Whale: (Felt used: white for the body and swan blue for the background) For the beluga, I glued down the body and fin. I sewed around all the edges, made a few pink long stitch for her mouth and a French knot eye.

Octopus: (Felt used: pomegranate pink for the body [but I’d recommend a coral or peach if you have it] and swan blue for the background) For the octopus, I glued down the body and eye bugles. I sewed around all the edges and made French knot eyes in black on the bulges.I made a few light pink long stitches in between the tentacles to show the webbing. Then I made ten bazillion French knots! I used two strands of embroidery floss (of the 6 it comes with) and wrapped my needle twice for each knot.

Humpback Whale: (Felt used: elephant med gray for the body, gray for the belly and swan blue for the background) For the Humpback whale, I glued down the body, belly and fin. I sewed around all the edges and added a French knot eye.

SafariLTD provided me with this beautiful World Landmarks TOOB. I am working with them to make this project as amazing as possible. All opinions of these products are honest and my own. We are planning an exciting giveaway for you at the end of this project!

Sewing the Landmarks

I only did one landmark in the ocean set: the mo’ai statues on Easter Island.

Easter Island: (Felt used: salt & pepper dark gray for the statues, cilantro green for the ground and sparrow blue for the background) I went very simple for this one and just glued and stitched the statues and background down. For all the landmarks, I started by sewing the front piece. Then I cut out a backing felt to match the final shape and added some snag-free Velcro to it. I finished sewed around the whole edge, switching colors where needed.

Did you notice I sewed the backing on? I used regular craft store polyester felt in black – the large piece that they sell in a package. It was only $3, and I figure I can turn it around and use the back as a felt board. I added two loops of ribbon for hanging. I sewed the backing on with a blanket stitch.

Montessori Ocean Animals 3-Part Cards

Montessori-style 3-part cards are great tools to help your young child learn new things. Jax loves them! I like to pair them with nature video clips from BBC and NatGeo that I play on YouTube about each animal. I created these ocean animal cards to be used along with SafariLTD’s TOOB figurines and my felt wall map animals. For the ocean, I used the following TOOBs: the Whales and Dolphins Toob and the Ocean Toob.

Click here to download my free pdf file to make your own. To make mine, I cut them out, glued them to orange construction paper (to match North America’s Montessori color) then laminated laminated them. It makes them shiny and strong.

Montessori Ocean 3-Part Cards & Control Chart

Jax just started his world continent unit with the world continent 3-part cards I made up for him. He loves his new Montessori globe, and has his continent song memorized! This ocean set may be a bit advanced for him right now, but who knows – he is always surprising me! Montessori circles back through material, diving deeper into it each time, so it never hurts to introduce something when your child show interest.

This set includes 3-part cards for the world’s oceans and a control chart showing the oceans outlined and labeled. You can start with a basic presentation of the oceans on our globe, comparing the globe to the cards. Click here to download my free pdf file to make your own

For younger kids, you can have them match the labels to the labels on the control map to help early reading skills. Talk about how the continents look on the cards versus the globe and control chart map projection.

For older kids, try a little painter’s tape on the backs of the labels and have them use the control chart to label your globe. Once your child is familiar with the labeled cards and chart, have them start matching the unlabeled cards as well. Eventually you can have them label the cards and the globe on their own.

Ocean Books

I’ve started collecting some ocean books, so when Jax chooses one in the schoolroom, I can pull out our SafariLTD figurines and 3-part cards to match them. Most of my books are from the thrift store and out of print. These are The Blue Whale, Seashore, John Denver’s Ancient Rhymes: A Dolphin Lullaby (Audio CD Included) (John Denver & Kids Series), Way Down Deep (All Aboard Science Reader) and Baby Beluga (Raffi Songs to Read).

I hope you are enjoying this project as much as I am! I’ve gotten see the maps a few of you have started! If you are sewing along, tag me on Instagram @iolstephanie and come comment on one of my pictures (I can’t see your photo if it you are private, but I can request to follow you temporarily if you comment on mine) or share photos on Facebook. You can also email me.

It’s Montessori Monday on Tuesday for me this week, but I hope you’ll check out the other great links!

Ocean in a Bottle & Sea Creature 3-Part Cards

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A sewing note first… Exciting sewing projects in the works! You voted on Facebook that the next free quietbook pattern be a world map. Your choice was perfect, as I need to start geography and world studies with Jax in homeschool! I’m really excited, as this will be a quietbook with all the continents, plus removable landmarks, labels and animals. Not only that, but there will be a big wall map to learn where everything goes! Lots of updates will be posted and I’ll be blogging each continent separately so you can sew along. Here’s a little peek!

Due to an upcoming beach trip for my birthday, Jax and I are studying the ocean right now. Here are two more activities we’ve been doing on that theme.

Sea Creature 3-Part Cards

Montessori uses a lot of 3-part cards in the 3yo – 6yo age group. They can be used in any subject to aid in adding vocabulary, learning to sort/classify, reading practice and so much more. Three-part cards are made up of two photos – one with a label, one without – as well as a separate label. Younger children start with the labeled card to help them learn the vocabulary. One of the best ways to use them is with small objects that match the photos. Older kids can work with the unlabeled card, matching the correct words or writing their own.

I knew I wanted to do sea life ocean matching after seeing this Pinterest pin. Armed with a 50% off coupon, I headed to the craft store for SafariLTD’s great Coral Reef TOOB (also here on Amazon). Alas, they didn’t have it! After some pouting, I used the coupon on their Wild TOOB for our world project and let Jax choose a small figure to put in our ocean-in-a-bottle (see below). He chose a dolphin calf (also here on Amazon, but cheaper in-store). I still really wanted to do some matching, so we checked the miniatures aisle. We had luck with this brand, which sells items for dioramas and school projects. I bought one sea life pack 7004 (all that was in stock) and two fish packs 7069. They do appear to have random assortments in each pack, so you might get something slightly different. My sea life pack had: sea turtle, octopus, penguin, dolphin, killer whale and seal. I got the two fish packs because I spotted three fish I recognized between the two: clownfish, blue tang and butterflyfish (I added the black dots with a Sharpie.)

I am a graphic designer by day, so laying out custom cards was a simple process, and I am happy to share my file with you! All of the photos are either public domain, creative commons or by me. All have been credited as required. Please use this file for educational use only. Click here to download the PDF file.

To assemble, cut out the cards, mount them on card stock, them laminate. So far I’ve only constructed my labeled cards, as I ran out of the packing tape I was laminating them with (but a laminator is on its way to me!)

Jax has had a great time working with these cards so far. We’ve done simple matching games, as well as more in-depth lessons.

In one activity, he’d draw a card and we’d talk about the sea creature and watch videos.

Jax invented a game in which he’d trace the first letter of the animal’s name with glass pebbles on his sandpaper letters.

I’m sure we’ll come up with more fun ideas over the next couple of weeks!

Ocean in a Bottle

There are so many posts out there on how to make an ocean in a bottle. Here is how it went for us!

We ditched the sand. Too hard to see in!

First, I needed the perfect bottle. I don’t drink soft drinks or anything, so I didn’t have much on hand. I had one water bottle in the fridge from a long walk we’d taken, but if you squeezed it, you could smash it in. I needed something with thick plastic, a smooth shape (for no distortions) and a wide mouth (to put the dolphin through.) I browsed the water aisle at the supermarket and found the perfect one – a $2 plastic bottle of VOSS water (which btw, tastes like… water!) These come in glass as well, but Jax definitely couldn’t manage a heavy water-filled glass bottle yet.

We started out using some craft sand in our bottle, but it didn’t work out. As soon as we added our colored water to the sand, it got super frothy and stuck to everything. We rinsed out the bottle and started over without the sand. Jax did enjoy pouring it in with a funnel, though.

I dropped both blue and green food dye into our water and Jax stirred. We wanted a pretty turquoise ocean. Jax held the bottle while I poured, then he chose some tiny shells and added them in with the dolphin calf.

Hi, I’m cute!

I put some paper down before pouring the oil in. I filled the bottle the rest of the way with the oil (but not where the cap covers.) Not pictured, I wiped the bottle down until it was clean and dry, then ran some hot glue around the top before screwing the cap on tightly.

The oil and water separate to simulate the look of the air and ocean waves when you rock it back and forth. Just figuring out how to hold the heavy bottle and make the correct motion was a good activity for Jax!

He really enjoyed watching the waves, and when he is a little older, we can discuss the science behind them.

Aquarium Scavenger Hunt & Coconut Sensory Sand

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We’ve just begun our first themed homeschool unit: the ocean! We will be going to the beach for my birthday weekend in one month, so it is perfect timing to learn all about the beach, the ocean and sea life before we get there.

To kick off the unit, we took a visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland. I was pretty sure Jax was going to love it, but I wanted to make it extra fun and engaging. I created a colorful aquarium scavenger hunt!

Aquarium Scavenger Hunt & Coconut Sensory Sand

Our scavenger hunt held up well. I had the sheets back-to-back inside a freezer bag that I trimmed and taped closed.

To make an aquarium scavenger hunt:

Being a graphic designer by day, I used Adobe InDesign to make my scavenger hunt layout. You could easily make a table in Microsoft Word. The photos were copied from the aquarium’s exhibit list, and I made sure to check if the exhibits were closed. (My absolute favorite animal, the green sea turtle, was not on exhibit. Boo!)

Ready to hunt for sea creatures with daddy! Happy Father’s Day!

I made sure to include boxes for marking off found animals, a large simple name for each one, then a smaller full name. Not shown, I typed up facts about each one as I added it to the hunt. Information like: region, fun fact and which exhibit it was in. I ended up remembering the facts and not needing to pull out my list. The font I used is a free Dnealian handwriting font, often used in Montessori.

Some animals we found from our list:

Poison Dart Frog

Porqupinefish

Dolphin

Golden Lion Tamerin

In order to make the scavenger hunt easier in a dark, crowded aquarium, we used stick-on jewels to mark off each animal. They we very easy to peel and stick quickly. They were repositionable as I had laminated the two sheets of the hunt together with a freezer bag.

Searching for sea animals!

The scavenger hunt was a big hit! I ended up carrying it most of the time so Jax’s hands were free to point and explore. I’d tell him what we needed to find in each tank, and we’d hunt together and mark each one off with a gem. We found a lot more than I’d thought we would! (The reason I made my hunt so large so so he’d have more opportunities to find the animals.) I made sure the point was to find as many as we could, not that we had to find all of them.

The Baltimore Aquarium is in those triangular buildings. We walked the Inner Harbor after lunch. Jax got a break with a hip carry in my ring sling.

Coconut Sensory Sand

Today we did beach-themed sensory work. Using three ingredients (4 cups white flour, 4 cups wheat flour and 1 cup coconut oil), I mixed up some amazing smelling sensory “sand” for Jax. (Thank you And Next Comes L for the recipe!) I hid seashells from our collections as well as dollar store glass gems. I presented the bin to Jax with a small sifter shovel from Target and a bowl for collecting his beach treasures.

He started out hesitant to get his hands dirty, but soon the excitement of finding treasure won over staying clean. He scooped, sifted and dug to find all the hidden objects. Then Jax suggested we write letters in the sand. He wanted to write the words “ocean” and “wave” that were up on his chalkboard. We also made impressions in the sand with the shells and our hands. Jax made “sand balls” by squeezing handfuls then laughed as he crumbled them.

I’ve seen on many blogs that you can write letters on shells and hide them. I didn’t want to write on our vacation shells, so we didn’t do that yet. There are lots of fun things you could do with sensory sand!

More Montessori fun with glass pebbles

There are so many great Montessori-inspired activities to do with dollar store glass pebbles, from sensory bins to counting tools!

This past week, Jax and I have already used them for counting with our number cards and to trace our sandpaper letters. Some other ideas are:

Find more Montessori activities at the Montessori Monday link-up!