Ocean Unit Studies and Activities

June 14, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

It seems like summer is the perfect time to learn about the ocean, and you can even use some ocean-themed printables in the car or plane if you’re traveling to the ocean (I did that once with the printables from the ocean unit study by Natural Beach Living).

Get layers of the ocean printables from Homeschool Giveaways, or do some hands on learning about the layers of the ocean with this activity from Little Bins for Little Hands. That post also includes an overview of the zones and a way to access printables on ocean themed STEM activities.

All of Our Homes has great ideas for an oceans of the world unit study that looks at where the oceans are located, different animals that live there, and activities with links to free resources you can use in your classroom.

Throw in a few books about the ocean and you’ll be all set. We had the National Geographic Kids First Big Book of the Ocean when my daughter was little, then graduated to the Smithsonian’s Ocean! knowledge encyclopedia.

Games are a great way to learn, and these ocean memory cards from The Purposeful Nest can be used as flash cards, pick an animal to learn about or play a memory game with. Or ply ocean bingo with these printable cards from Confessions of Parenting. Simple Everyday Mom has another ocean matching game, which has super cute cartoony characters, perfect for preschoolers.

I try not to include a ton of paid resources in these kinds of roundups, but Inspire the Mom has a gorgeous unit study on ocean animals (among others) that I couldn’t resist sharing. It includes nature study, math, language arts, handwriting and more, and is perfect for homeshooling for kiddos from preschool up through second grade.

Inspire My Play has a great collection of ocean-themed play and craft ideas for little ones, including this super cute ocean cleanup activity pictured above.

Need more ideas? Check out this post on an ocean-themed bump game, more ocean learning activities and some clear ocean slime, perfect for playing with shells and little ocean animals!

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Fine Motor Task Cards for Kids

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

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