Mermaid Ice Excavation

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Summer’s here which means that it’s officially ice excavation season! We love ice excavations and as the years pass, I’m always slightly surprised by just how into them Miss G is. She’s done many ice excavations in her time, and yet she still gets all amped up when I mention doing one {which I of course love}. I do try to make them fun and different each time, playing into whatever she’s interested in that summer, so a mermaid rescue ice excavation it was for my girl who currently loves mermaids. {So fun, right?! Mermaid birthday party here we come!}

Mermaid Necklaces

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Summer vacation is officially in full swing – Brad’s home from Kuwait, we’re back in BC, and life is good. And now that we’re settled an in one place for a little while, Miss G and I have begun digging into the collection of fabulous activities in the Backyard Summer Camp eBook I co-wrote with a handful of awesome kid bloggers a couple of months back. Today, we decided on making the jewelled shell necklaces from the ocean-themed section of the book written by Amanda of The Educators’ Spin On It. Miss G loved the activity because the necklaces were just like the ones mermaids wear, and I loved it because we had all of the materials we needed on hand and it would only take a moment to pull it together {score!}

Frozen Ocean Animal Rescue {salt, water, & ice play}

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Gracen and I are lucky enough to have one of her little friends join us for an afternoon of play each Wednesday. They play quite well together, so I put a few things out for them to explore in advance, then step back to let them play, helping communication and sharing happen when needed. We always have a good time together, but the last couple of times I’ve noticed that together they plow through the activities I’ve set out (2 minutes of play dough! 1 stroke of paint! 3 minutes of water play!) and then look at me with eager eyes for something more.

Ocean in a Bottle {& an ocean-themed play date}

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On Wednesday afternoons, Miss G and I are lucky enough to have one of her little friends join us for some afternoon play. While they happily engage in their own games and play for part of the time, I also like having a couple of fun invitations to play and / or create out for them to explore if the choose to. When I asked Grae if she had any activity ideas for our play date, she suggested that we play with the ocean items we collected at the beach last weekend. That was that – an ocean-themed day it was!

Ocean Bath

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Don’t ask me how I come up with these things… Tonight as I was running a bath for Miss G, I randomly decided to surprise her with a special themed bath. I basically gathered up a few things from our ocean and pond sensory bins, added a couple of drops of blue food colouring, and that was it.

Gracen was super excited when I dramatically flung open the shower curtain to reveal her surprise bath and immediately jumped in.

I was a little bit worried about her sitting on the hard items by accident, but she automatically cleared them out of the way as soon as she climbed in without me having to say a thing.

Two things to keep in mind when converting your bath tub into a mini ocean… Make sure the ocean items are washed in warm soapy water first (duh!) and try to pick rocks and shells that are smooth so that no little tushies are poked during the fun.

The huge part of the fun of course is swimming around in the tub with sharks and whales and crocodiles… We got these little sea creatures at the dollar store quite a while ago, but you can find them at toy stores and teacher stores too.

♥

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Ocean Sensory Bin

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Summer has finally arrived in the Lower Mainland and it’s getting h.o.t. (no complaining here – we love it). Being that we like to be outside for the majority of the day (and our little old house heats up like an oven), there needs to be some sort of relief so that Miss G doesn’t overheat. So, when we’re not at a pool, beach, or water park, we’re most likely in the backyard playing with water, ice, or a combination of both. Today, we gathered a few things and put together an ocean sensory bin to splash around in.

Some rocks, a handful of seashells, a few pieces of driftwood, a fistful of greens plucked from the garden, a few floating sea creatures, and a couple drops of food colouring, and you’ve got yourself a mini ocean in your backyard.

These ocean creatures are so neat. We found them for $1.25 each and they have the coolest squishy / stretchy / rubbery texture to them. They feel eerily realistic.

Gracen dove in, and thought it was pretty hilarious that I’d set the crocodile up on a piece of driftwood. She experimented with taking him off and balancing him back on again, and once she’d pretty much mastered it, she moved on to balancing the dolphin and whale atop driftwood islands of their own.

Of course, there was plenty of swimming involved too.

She was just getting started on emptying the ocean out onto the towel when we heard a clattering coming around the side of the house… Grandma Charlotte and her friend, Judy, had arrived for an afternoon visit! And with all kinds of special gifts for Miss G, no less. Needless to say, our ocean fun came to a halt. Presents to open and and Manmaws to visit take priority, obviously. As they should. ☺

♥

You can see Gracen’s ice, rainbow rice, beach, ocean, gardening, moon dough, construction, and bird -themed

bins by clicking on the links.