Shark Week (A Simple Summer Theme)

So although we were headed on vacation a few weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to have a Simple Summer Theme we could still explore. As we were at the ocean we went with a theme that matched - Shark Week!

I packed a few things I figured we might do in between trips to the beach and in case of bad weather. But, we had such a great week exploring a new place, hanging at the beach, and enjoying some amazing weather that we barely got to any of the activities.

Instead although we got to a few activities fit in on the trip instead we wound up having something closer to a "Shark Day" when we got home from vacation. But it was a great way to come back home and unwind from the trip.

Beach Week (Simple Summer Theme 2)

It's been a couple of weeks now, but we greatly enjoyed our second Simple Summer theme: Beach Week.

Ocean related activities are always some of our favorites! We had a lot of fun earlier this year with Big Brother's Ocean birthday party, so we were able to build off of that with even more fun activities. And even though it will be a while until we see the real ocean, this made us feel like we could almost be there. 

Beach Small World Play

This past week we enjoyed exploring beach & ocean activities as part of our Simple Summer Theme series.

One thing I've recently been wanting to do more of with the kiddos is small world play. 

Using the sandbox was a natural idea for beach play, although we also could have set up a small sensory tub for this type of play. 

Ocean Birthday Party

As we've mentioned before, we love sharing our birthday party ideas here at Kitchen Floor Crafts. This Ocean Birthday Party for Big Brother's 5th birthday was especially memorable as it was the first time he really participated in preparing for the event.

But I should add these are real parties planned by me, a real mom. Sometimes I love the party themes and ideas I find on Pinterest, I'm in awe of how coordinated they are. But then I realize many of them are put together by professionals. These parties are our real parties, captured in the moment as I also try and run the party. They are still hugely successful, and we've loved every one!

Pudding Beach Cups

We wrapped up our Ocean themed week over the weekend by making these yummy Pudding Beach Cups. We connected this activity both to our Quick Pick & Projects of the Week and our Kids Cook! posts.

Because we used instant, no cook pudding mix Big Brother could do most of the work himself and was pretty proud of his work at the end. (It also meant they were a little brighter and a little less smoothly assembled than if I had made them, but the point was for him to be hands on with this special treat.) 

Before cooking we read a new find from our library, Beach by Elisha Cooper. The book tells the story of a day at the beach from morning to night through simple watercolors and a variety of little pictures. It reminded us of our day trip to the beach a few weeks before, which is what kicked off ocean week to begin with. 

Ocean Alphabet

As we continued with our Ocean theme this week I knew I wanted to tie in some literacy skills practice. With the warm, almost perfect, summer weather, it was also a great time to be outside and the kids were definitely interested with playing with water. That inspired the creation of our "Ocean Alphabet" activity.

Big Brother has done alphabet fishing before in our alphabet sensory bin. But this was the first time we created something outside in our actual pool. It was a huge hit with both Big Brother and Little Miss H!

Under the Sea Votive Holders

This is a fun and simple craft using old baby food jars we made this week to go along with our current Ocean theme.

Using craft acrylic paint, clean baby food jars, and stickers we created these cute votive holders. 

(Project note: Don't have any baby food jars? Any small, smooth sided glass jar will work too!) 

3 Ways to Play with Shells

Last week we had the chance to get away to the seacoast for an overnight. We all loved being on the beach, both for an evening picnic and a morning playing in the waves.

But our two small trips definitely didn't feel like enough time there. Everyone was rather bummed to return home.

So we decided to try and recreate some of the ocean fun here at home. Last weekend we started exploring some ocean fun and we've decided to extend it into this week too.

Our first three activities have all been sensory play based around shells!

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: Commotion in the Ocean Watercolor And Cray Pas Painting

We must have summer on the brain with the nice weather we've had a taste of these past few days because we got excited to think about the ocean. This week's Quick Pick & Project is based on the book Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae.

I absolutely love using cray pas and watercolors as a medium with kids. The cray pas make crisp, colorful lines and the watercolors fill in between the lines. The final pieces are always really vivid. I've used it a lot in the classroom with students.

I especially enjoy using it with kids as a medium for painting underwater scenes as the watercolors give a "watery" look and easily fill a whole page with color.