Ocean Sensory Play & Matching Game for Kids

This weeks Creative Preschool topic is Ocean and Fish so today I have a fun Sensory Play activity and Sea Shell matching game to share with you! Both were really fun, and can be done with wet or dry sand. We started off with dry sand and then added water to make a tide pool in a box. With our store bought seaweed, I don’t think we could have gotten any closer to experiencing the ocean without traveling hundreds of miles.

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Ocean Sensory Activity

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Sand
Shells
Water (Optional)
Dried Seaweed (Affiliate Link-Optional-I bought the thickest kind I could find from an Asian market, I have to say it turned out really cool and looked just like the kind of seaweed you find laying on the beach. It was dried when I bought it, but once it soaked up some water it felt nice and slippery.)
Large bin
Sand Toys (Optional)

Directions:

Assemble all the supplies and let child play. For some added ambiance, play some ocean waves music.

As we played we talked about oceans and I pulled out our globe and we located all the oceans. We have been talking about how the North Pole and South Pole are cold, so I used those as a starting off point to talk about differences in oceans (the ones towards the north and south are colder than the ones next to the equator). We also talked about waves, animals that live in the ocean, and watched Planet Earth Oceans and a You Tube video about tide pools. We couldn’t help but sing Slippery Fish by Charlotte Diamond all day long either. My kids love that song and its fun to get them moving around and dancing.

Sea Shell Matching Game

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Supplies:
Sand
Different types of shells (a set of each type of shell)
Sand toys (Optional)

Most of the shells we used I found at the ocean, but if you need you can also buy shells (I have seen bags at the dollar store). If there is not a variety of shell types you can paint some with nail polish to make them different colors for the matching game.

Directions:

Hide the shells in the sand and have child find them all. Once they are all found have the child match them together by type. Shells come in so many different shapes, sizes, and colors you could repeat the game and sort them using different attributes. Matching similar items into groups takes new skills compared to matching completely identical items.