Sea Life Project - Part 1

Although we no longer have TV, Octonauts is one programme the girls still continue to watch on You tube and it is pretty safe for them in terms of content.  They have all been mad about it for ages now and I always hear them reeling off new facts about sea creatures I've never heard of.

I was getting a little concerned as they were hooked on it, but then I decided to get more involved!

Up until now, Nur had not been interested in sitting down to do any formal kind of learning and everytime we've tried she's never managed to concentrate for more than 10mins.  I thought this project would be right up her street, enable me to bond with her and share her interest and also show her that learning can be great fun!

We decided we'd make another poster (we're hooked on making posters).

We started by sitting down and making a list of all the sea creature they wanted to focus on.  Then we got out the Arts and Crafts materials and made the different creatures using a variety of techniques and materials.  We decided to keep with the Octonauts theme and use similar colours to the creatures on the programme.

We made a Sea-horse using pasta and cous cous

We made an Octopus using a paper plate and bubble wrap

The Puffer fish was made using a paper plate and some paper spikes

We made a Parrot fish using some coloured sand and glitter

The Slime Eel (Hagfish) was made by twisting the outer ring of a paper plate

My favourite was the Jelly fish which we made with another paper plate and some wool for its tentacles

The cookie cutter shark was also made from coloured sand

We also added some Quranic ayahs to our display as we had talked a lot about Allah's mercy and blessed we are that Allah (swt) has made the sea and all the creatures within it for us to use and how we should be grateful to Allah (swt) and obey his commands.

It would have a bit deep if I had gone into a full blown study of the layers of ocean but we briefly talked about the different types of sea water.  The lowest level of the ocean is full of darkness (The Midnight Zone) as no light gets to it, so we discussed how this is like having no belief in Allah and how blessed we are to have the light of Iman and be Muslims. Alhumdulillah!

  

The girls told me everything they already knew about each creature and we found out more info through the interenet and videos.   Rahmah took on the role of Professor Inkling and Shellington and compiled the creature reports for each sea creature.

The sea water was 2 blue plastic bags and the coral was made out of some tissue paper and coloured pom poms.  We scattered some shiny stars onto our display as well as some of the shells we collected in Tunisa.

The completed display was then hung in our hallway for us to learn from and share with our guests.

Nur was absolutely delighted when she saw the octonauts worksheets I had printed for her. She loved matching up the names of the Octonauts to their pictures and reading the 'I like Octonauts' book I printed and made for her.

We completed some other activities about oceans and sea life from here.  I noticed how Nur was really beginning to look at the letters and words in the books carefully.

Then we planned for our big trip to the Sea life centre with some of our home-schooling friends!