Sea life Sunday- Under The Sea

When I started this project, the plan was 30 themes in 30 days, I was sure that would take us until this shut down ended. Well here we are still still shut down. We have been incredibly blessed with our health and being able to work from home. Our girls are also at a great age where they are enjoying this time and I can still actually help them with their school work. I would be in a mental institution if I were required to help with Algebra (I am so bad at it, I just looked up how to spell it.) Since putting together my original theme list, I have come up with several more ideas. Due to needed adjustments for weather and other activities, we didn't get to do some of the themes the girls really wanted to try. So I have decided to extend it to 40. I think I have the energy and supplies to get us there!

Sunday kicked off with the crowd favorite Sea Life Sunday. They also wanted a Mermaid Day, so I strategically placed these back to back so we could carry over the numerous materials and activities. Both our girls love all things under the sea, but Avery is particularly obsessed these days. Marine Biology is her latest career choice and Elise went through a year long phase of wanting to be a professional shell collector. We actually found someone who did this for a living! Who knew?

I was pretty tired after our last few theme days, so I decided I needed to mix things up a bit. Instead of doing a big set up the night before, I decided to make the set up part of our craft. I put up the blue backdrop (I don't know how this little plastic table cloth has outlived so many themes, it has literally had 9 lives!) I was overly excited to find the last little bit of green streamer in my party box! The girls helped me twist it to look like seaweed. The girls then spent the next several hours working on sea life decorations. For $2.11 I found these cut outs on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/listing/744617658/ocean-life-svg-ocean-creatures-svg-sea?ref=yr_purchases. They each selected their favorite sea life, cut them out, then used them to trace on different colored construction paper. They took great pride in in putting them into our display. We also took out our favorite Usborne book on how to draw animals and drew some of our favorite under water creatures. As a finishing touch to our display, the girls gathered up shells, other sea life books, and items from around the house.

I was surprised that we could not find many costumes for this theme. They ended up settling on mermaid shirts and turtle hats.

Snacks were fun and the girls created most of them. I had some printable labels in my account from our Mermaid party https://www.etsy.com/listing/481666154/under-the-sea-food-labels-printable?ref=yr_purchases. We made seaweed which is just grapes on skewers that they enjoyed creating more than eating. A Dolphin in Turtle Eggs (A banana in grapes), fish crackers, shark teeth(sliced white cheddar cheese), and Swedish Fish of course. I would have killed to add some shrimp or real sea food, but it has been hard to come by anything decent.

We finally finished off the batch of cupcakes we started on during Where is Waldo Wednesday. For under the sea cupcakes you just need some blue frosting, crushed graham crackers for sand, and a Swedish Fish.

Later that afternoon, we visited the Clearwater Aquarium, home of Winter from the movie Dolphin Tale. This is a great website for virtual field trips, lots of interactive videos, and activities to download. I found so much more than we expected, so we didn't get to do as much as we wanted. We plan to revisit again soon. https://www.seewinter.com/

We were going to watch Dolphin Tale or Finding Dory to close out our night but it got too late. Before bed, we read a great scholastic book on whales. I have never seen this book before and no one had any ideas on where it came from. I swear there is a book elf that sneaks into the house and leaves books in our book case. The book elf is most likely Grandma.

Time to go from under the sea to under the covers. We are ready to wake up to Mermaid Monday!