“At Sea” with a fishy mobile

For those of you who are new to me and my blog, let me introduce my world… this is Sprog! Born August 2013 and therefore fast approaching his second birthday. This is his shark face, and his shark t-shirt.  This week myself and my husband have started on a new adventure with him to get our imaginative and creative juices really flowing.

You can read about why I’ve started this adventure over the at #imaginationmatters linky page but for now, sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labour in this debut week.

Our first “At Sea” adventure was very much a team effort and made me extremely proud of both of my boys.  The hubby is not a creative type, he’s from the “throw the child around and tickle them” school of fatherhood which Sprog can’t get enough off.

Hubby was home early on Wednesday so we cracked out the paper with a bit of a poorly Sprog.

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1. The fish for this were coloured on Monday evening after work/school/Nanny day care and I simply got to cutting them out.

2. Sprog chose what colour paper he wanted for each shape that we cut out and started to grab the glue stick to help out.

3. As he was so interested in the glue stick, I adapted the plan and we pulled some tissue paper out of the craft tub which he stuck wherever he wanted…including my knee!!

4. We used some tin foil to create strips on the funnel as Sprog helped to put the glue on. (Excuse the topless Sprog, he had a raging temperature at the time).

5. Daddy and Sprog created some foil “shiny bits” (that’s definitely the technical term) and stuck together the sea.

6. I strung together the fish on to 3 bits of string and put buttons on the bottom to weight them.

7. We assembled the whole display.

8. Sprog stood back in amazement and proclaimed “Fish” very loudly.

   

This idea was based on something found in a library book so I can’t take complete credit for it but what I particularly love is how the morning after we made it, Sprog came downstairs, stood in the lounge, look at it and just went “Wow” and spent ages playing with it again.

Left: The diagram in the book. Right: Our version.

It has been a great focal point for our discussions about the sea this week as we’ve talked about fish, boats, the sea and the materials that we used to make it.

We have done several other activities this week which are sea themed (some are very loosely linked) which have included;

• Seen the fish at the free aquarium/fish shop!
• Read about the animals along the seashore from a library book.
• Drawn and painted a seascape complete with sun, boat, turtle and dolphin.
• Tried to draw waves rather than straight lines (unsuccessfully at the moment but it’s the effort that counts).
• Played with a new bath time inflatable which has penguins and sharks all over it.
• Water play in the garden with his big blue boat.
• Learned “Ring-a-ring of roses”…. remember that second verse with the “fishes in the water” … there’s my tenuous link!

Changes in Sprog

• He knows the words and will start the actions for “Ring-a-ring of roses”
• Become more confident in his pronunciation of some words such as “fish” and “shark”.  “Shark” definitely sounds less like “Shat” than it did at the start of the week!