Oh hey my friends.
Welcome to my new blog series “A week of Play”. This weeks theme is “under the sea”
If you’re anything like me, you struggle with play ideas. For instance, I find myself constantly browsing Pinterest, saving all these ideas with such great intentions and then, life happens, things get busy, and another week has gone by and I’ve done nothing (except for this one time)
Last week, I did a little experiment, to try to help myself be more intentional with his play, and that was set a theme for the week, and at the start of the week, plan exactly what I was going to do.
Easy is the name of the game. So I thought, one themed activity a day should do it, and that’s exactly what we did.
I stumbled across the website “my bored toddler” and basically got all my ideas from there. They are one of the best sites I found that actually give you a whole bunch of ideas in one post, instead of dribs and drabs.
Here is the link to their guide for Under the Sea.
BOOKS WE READ:
- Never Touch a Shark
- Commotion in the Ocean – WATCH HERE
- The Rainbow Fish – WATCH HERE
VIDEO THAT GOT US MOVING
- Lets go Swimming – WATCH HERE
PLAY IDEAS
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Play Dough Tray
This is so easy, grab some coloured play dough, preferably greens and blues and add anything else that is blue or green. I had some under the sea creatures that I added and we used as stamps. You could also add sea shells.
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Sea Oobleck
Mix 1 part Cornflour and 1 part water, add a splash of food colouring, throw in some sea creatures, and voila, messy oobleck play. The recipe is really a do it to touch kind of recipe, so if you want the oobleck thicker, add more cornflour and if you want it runnier add more water – simples
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DIY Fish Mobile
We cut out some yellow and pink fish and tied them to strings for little miss to look at on her activity centre. She loved them and was mesmerised for ages looking at them. J also enjoyed helping me make the fish.
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Paper Plate Jellyfish
Another super easy craft. Cut some paper plates in half, draw on some cartoon eyes, punch some holes in the bottom and get your toddler to thread through some pipe cleaners or craft cords. You could also use crepe paper. Older toddlers might also enjoy colouring in the paper plates.
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Blue sea foam
I wanted to use shaving cream for this, but didn’t have any. So we decided to create some blue foam. The recipe and a video can be found here
Essentially all you need is:
1 tbs dishwashing liquid
1/4 cup water
Food colouring
I/2 tsp cornflour
whisk it all together until stiff peaks form and voila. I also added my sea creatures so that J could fish them out.
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Bubbles and Sand
Not much to describe here, sand is a great sensory tool for kiddies. We burried our sea creatures and then looked for them. And bubbles are just fun. Found this cool hack where you tape the bubbles to a post so its less messy and I gotta say, it kept J entertained for AGES!
I’m sure there are plenty more ideas out there, but we had SO MUCH FUN. I really enjoyed not having too much pressure on myself, all I had to do was set up one pre-planned activity each day and we were done. I really loved seeing J get excited about the activities and how he interacted with each one.
If you set up any of these play ideas for your toddlers, please tag me on Instagram so I can follow along with you!