Rainbow Shells

Holly chose some white shells from her collection of shells today to paint. She had a selection of paints to try and she opted for watercolor paints. Since the water color will wash off I plan to seal them with clean acrylic paint. These new rainbow shell treasures will be added to her sensory tub or nature collection - which ever she sees fit. Holly loved this rather quick and easy project - perfect for a nice drizzly afternoon!

Beach Bins

We have a few exploration bins we use throughout the year but a favorite of Holly's are her Beach Bins. These bins are filled with sand, various shells she has collected from local beaches, small plastic sea creatures and a few miscellaneous mini shells she purchased a while back. Each time I bring these out they are new again. She gets out a magnifying glass and inspects them over and over. She sorts shells, draws shells and plays with the little sea creatures. Our beach bins are fantastic entertainment and a fun chance to learn too!

Ocean Books & Films

With Summer as our main focus I have not posted as often as I'd like... I am going to try and do better on this! Schooling is still happening in between the homeschool activities, visits with friends and family, camping trips, day trips and more. Life is really - very busy!

I did want to share with you that we are still enjoying a theme of 'Oceans' for the summer. Some books that we have been really enjoying I am going to share. Some of these are geared towards children and others are just wonderful resource books we have borrowed from the library. As well as a wonderful book collection we have been enjoying a variety of documentary movies from Netflix. These have all been a lot of fun to enjoy!

Some films we are viewing are:

The Blue Planet : Seasonal Seas & Coral Seas
The Blue Planet: Tidal Seas & Coasts
The Blue Planet: Ocean World & Frozen Seas
Coral Reef Adventure
Under the Sea: Imax film

And, here are books we are enjoying:

Sea Star Art Project

Today Holly did a fantastic job on a sea star art project. Such a simple project, but really enforces taking a closer look at a favorite sea creature with a fine eye. Today we picked out some favorite pictures of sea stars and also inspected a dried sea star that we own. In our discoveries texture was the key element -- sea stars have beautiful textures.

After much observation, we discussed how the appearance of texture on a sea star might be recreated in art. The final product was a hand cut sea star covered in orange and white paint... with fine detail work that included a pencil and toothpick. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun and the results were fantastic!

Take a cut out of a sea star and colored paint of choice - in this project we used brown paper, orange paint and white paint. With the end of a pencil, the eraser end, you will dip it in the colored paint and make several, several... did I mention several paint dots all over the sea star. The paint being a tad gloppy is good as it will create even more visual texture. Then you will dip a tooth pick into white paint and create even more white dots all over the sea star. The layers of these two paints will give a textured look similar to a sea star.

Summer Theme

I have done some thinking on how we are going to handle our summer season with schooling. I lean towards year round learning... not schooling, but learning. This can prove difficult with being busy enjoying summer! So, I have talked with Holly and we chose a theme for our summer months, one that we can center some learning around and yet enjoy over the summer months.

Our summer theme is Ocean & Sea Life. With this theme we will enjoy many books, movies, art projects, writing, science experiments, math and outings to local beaches! We are excited to take this approach to our summer and still keep learning as a main focus. I think it will be a great summer!!

Yesterday we met up with our homeschooling friends for a kick-off day to our summer theme with a beach exploration at low tide. We met up at Titlow Beach in Tacoma. This is a fantastic local beach for exploring. Holly had a great time discovering various sea creatures throughout the changing tide, rocks, pilings and tide pools. We brought along some various containers for capturing critters for closer inspection, a magnifying glass and a great chart for determining various creatures on the beach. It was a fantastic day!