We absolutely love the beach and could spend every weekend there if we could. Since summer is pretty much here in Texas we have already planned days to escape to the shoreline for fun in the sun and endless hermit crab and seashell hunting. The girls and I have been working on an assignment based on our favorite getaway.

The girls usually have a small hole dug filled with hermit crabs that they have collected throughout the day. It was such a surprise to find this guy crawling on the shore. Our recent trip to the gulf sparked our interest to learn more about the mystery beneath the ocean. I love watching animal documentaries but for the kiddos they can be a bit boring. My older daughters are ages eight and six, they absolutely loved Dolphin Reef on Disney Plus. The movie follows a young and curious dolphin named Ecco and his family. Natalie Portman narrates the life of this lovable bottle nose and his adventures through the coral reef in the Polynesian Islands. The girls were fascinated by the story of how life around the reef is so interconnected to each other. The dolphins were a big highlight but there was so much more about the ecosystem of the ocean and how it all fit together. We definitely recommend this movie. When my husband came home he was flooded with everything that they had just learned about the deep sea.

We decided to recreate an ocean scene and identify the creatures surrounding the coral reef. The girls instantly went to work and it was so fun creating play dough sculptures with them. I pulled some books that we have been reading throughout the week for inspiration. We also have plenty of readers that appropriate for their reading level.

Madelyn says she wants an ocean life rescue center when she grows up. It is so fun to find a subject in which they flourish. It is never work when you are having fun. They learned so much from this assignment. Here are a few books that we have been reading or are going to read this week.

We loved our lessons this week. A few ideas to keep it going would be to…

• Create an ocean themed spelling test
• Creative writing topic, If I lived in the ocean..
• Label the parts of a dolphin
• Service Project, clean up a beach area
• Draw or make a video about the different predators of the ocean.
• Mammals or Fish? Identify the creature

We hope you enjoy this assignment as much as we did!

Happy learning and blessings,

Venice Williams