Ideas and resources
If your yard is like mine and overgrown with dandelions, discover how you can use them to entertain your little ones. You can encourage your kids to help you pick all of the dandelions in your yard and then show them how they can use them to make this fun toy.
I will file this Spring Flower Sensory Bottle craft, created by Emma from My Little 3 and Me, into the “why didn’t I think of that” file and try it soon.
Check out these plastic toys
perfect for making sensory bottles
Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks.
First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?
Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game.
Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.
Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom.
Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more.
Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet.
Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!
You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.
Instead of everyone criticizing dandelions, put them to good use. The greens are high in vitamins–use them in a salad. You can make dandelion jelly or wine. I just picked some dandelion flowers yesterday to try a new lotion recipe I found.