We started a new homeschooling unit study recently, and I thought it would be fun to share just a few of the learning activities we have been doing!  This is a study of the ocean and the creatures and plants that live in it.  We’re going through the alphabet letter by letter and learning about new things each day!

Vera already knows her alphabet, but she is working on writing each letter and learning what sound each one makes.

Each day we are reading books about the ocean and practicing a Bible verse (a new one each week).

On our first day, we learned a song about the five oceans.  The girls used watercolors to color maps of the world.

The next two days we studied A for Anemone.  Tad taught one of those days because I was getting my 3-hour glucose test done.

While I was out I saw this photo on Instagram of the girls making sea anemones out of purple play dough!

The next day we made sea anemones out of tissue paper.

We learned about the letter A and its sound.

Jude is always right there with us!  He likes to color while the girls do their activities.  He also has an ocean puzzle that he enjoys putting together.

I used this new cleaning tool as a visual aid (and as something they could all touch too) for a sea anemone.

The next couple of days we studied B for Beach.

The kids played with a cool sand play dough and with sea shells.  We discussed different types of beaches and sand as well as how sand is formed.

We took a field trip to the beach at the end of that week!

Our second week began with two days studying C is for Crab.

Vera has been working on counting objects and tracing her numbers.  We talked about how crabs have eight legs and two pincers and about the different colors they can be.

We made crabs!

So cute, right?

We also practiced our crab walk!

Again, Jude loves to be right in the midst of it all!

We measured how small the smallest crab is (the pea crab) and how big the largest crab is (the spider crab).

We talked about which of these sticker creatures lives in the ocean and which ones live on the beach.

Our next day was C is for Clownfish!  We had fun playing clownfish and darting out and back in to the anemone (the rest of us would wave our arms while the clownfish darted in and out).  We did some counting activities and watched a fun video about a young clownfish and his mother.

And here are the finished clownfish (we accidentally did four stripes instead of three… my fault!):

For our snack we had little clownfish (made out of apricots, raisins, and white chocolate)!

We also studied C is for Clam.  In addition to learning about clams (their habitats, feeling the shells, learning what they look like, etc.), we also did some coloring pages and a few other fun sheets.

We’ve been doing many other activities too, including reading ocean books, doing other coloring pages, practicing our cutting and gluing skills, doing matching games, putting together puzzles, and much more.

At the end of it all, I may put together a little homeschooling oceans unit ebook if any of you would be interested in that.  I’ve compiled what we’ve done from a lot of different sources, and it might be nice to be able to access it all in one place!

We view homeschooling as such a lifestyle of learning, rather than about sit-down activities.  There are so many things our kids are learning each day outside of their “school time,” and it’s wonderful to see how smart they are becoming!  We’re planning on doing this oceans unit all through the summer and then taking a bit of a break when baby Apricot comes in the fall (when everyone else is starting back to school!).  During that time we’ll focus lots on reading aloud, educational games (Legos, puzzles, etc.), and practical life skills.