A Week at the Beach

Fun at the Beach

This week was our recovery vacation after our Disney/Universal "vacation." My husband had to go back to work, but M and I were lucky enough to continue on to the beach. We were all pretty exhausted from our marathon week in Orlando, so we spent most of the week trying to relax.

There was quite a bit of TV and movie watching this week. We did stumble
upon a few interesting episodes, like The Cat in the Hat exploring outer space.

World Around Me

There is so much to learn at the beach! We spent a lot of time beachcombing and collected shark teeth and lots of different kinds of shells.

We talked about ocean tides and currents as we swam and jumped the waves. We also talked about how her life vest helps her float in the ocean, and about how lifeguards help people at the beach by watching for dangers and warning swimmers by changing the color of their flag.

We explored the different types of sand - dry sand, wet sand, fine sand that feels good on your toes, and sand with lots of shells that can hurt your toes.

We built sand castles, dug and filled moats, and decorated our castles with shells, rocks and sticks (and even a crab!). We observed how the sand absorbs water (and why we couldn't keep our moat filled up), and how wet sand sticks together and makes better sand castles.

She learned how to collect water from the ocean in her bucket so she could wash off her hands and feet. 

And she watched what happened to the water when she poured it on the sand.

We also pretended to be mermaids in the pool (see our mermaid fins?), and realized that it is much easier to walk with legs! (Interestingly, it is also much easier to swim with legs than it is with a pretend mermaid fin....)

Reading

We, of course, read books this week. I did check out some library books about the ocean and ocean animals before we left on vacation, but she hasn't shown much interest in most of them. Her favorites this week have been "The Bears' Vacation" by Stan and Jan Berenstain, "The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor" by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen, "The Coughing Catfish" by San and Jan Berenstain, "Father Bear Comes Home" by Else Holmelund Minarik (Illustrated by Maurice Sendak), and "Gone Fishing: Ocean Life by the Numbers" by David McLimans. 

I like the Magic School Bus books because they have a story line, but also have extra information on the sides of the page, so I can give M more detail if she is interested. She liked seeing all of the pictures of different types of fish, especially these fish that live on the dark ocean floor. 

In addition to reading, we collected a bunch of flat, smooth shells to make a movable alphabet. I have been reading about Montessori programs, and thought it would be fun to make our own movable alphabet with found objects. M liked spelling her name and singing the alphabet song as we put them in order.

Unfortunately, I was too busy putting the rest of the stickers on the shells to take pictures of her playing with them, but they turned out well. I got the sheets of stickers (above) from the dollar section at Target, and they are sticking pretty well so far (I got plenty so I can replace them as needed). 

Math

We have been practicing counting and recognizing numbers lately. "Gone Fishing: Ocean Life by the Numbers" by David McLimans is nice because each page has a different number with information about a sea creature, so it's a different way to see numbers. M wasn't all that interested in the facts they gave about each animal (habitat, threats, endangered status), but liked looking at the illustrations.

I also found Dr. Seuss Match & Go Fish cards in the Target dollar section, and that was a big hit! I was surprised that M really got the idea of Go Fish, and played through an entire game with me. After we played, I shuffled the cards and put them all face down for a memory matching game (she has been playing something similar on my phone, so she already understood the concept). I like that the cards have the numeral as well as the corresponding number of pictures so she could count them. Each pair of cards has a unique image (Cat in the Hat, Sally, birthday cakes, fish, etc.), so it's easy to find the matches and work on sorting as well.

Art and Music

I didn't plan many activities for this week because I wanted M to be able to relax and enjoy the beach on her own terms. We did a few "paint with water" sheets, built and played with her Little Mermaid Duplo set, and obviously built and decorated sand castles. I found a few beach coloring sheets, but M wasn't really interested. I have a few ideas for next week though.... stay tuned :)

Florida Update #7 - Pool Day 2

Friday

We had originally planned on doing 3 days at Universal (they had a "buy 2 get 1 day free" promotion), but we found out that the promotion ended the week before. It was a blessing in disguise - I don't think any of us were complaining about having an extra day to stay at the hotel!

We checked the hotel schedule, and saw that they were having a reptile show at 2pm and a Hawaiian Luau dinner and show that evening. We spent the morning by the pool, and I even got to take a break while my husband and dad watched M swim!

We took a break for lunch at the restaurant by the pool again. M drew pictures of Mickey while we waited for our food.

The reptile show was in the same area as the restaurant. It wasn't what I was expecting - I thought they would allow the kids to touch some of the animals - but it was still interesting. The speaker was from Gatorland, and brought a tarantula, scorpion, ball python, monitor, alligator, and 6 week old baby alligator.

I even learned a few new facts. Did you know that most lizards can't run and breathe at the same time? We met Mac the Monitor (get it? haha) who is a great predator because he can breathe while chasing prey - cool!

We also learned that it's a myth that you should run zig-zag's if you're running away from an alligator. Alligator's bodies are much more flexible than ours, and they are better able to turn than we are. He said you are more likely to fall and much better off running in a straight line until the gator gives up. The good news? As long as people don't feed wild alligators, they won't be interested in humans! (And that's why you can get a hefty fine for feeding wild gators in Florida!)





Later that evening we went to the Hawaiian Luau. They had a special menu with Hawaiian BBQ and Mahi Mahi (plus pineapple chicken and rice for the kiddos). We each got a flower lei and listened to a live band during dinner. They had a show with hula dancers and a flame thrower, but M was too tired to stick around. It was another fun filled day!

Florida Update #4 - Pool Day

Wednesday

We had planned on taking a break on Wednesday to spend the day at the hotel pool before tackling Universal. We stayed at Marriott Harbour Lake in Orlando, which was right near Sea World (which is definitely on my to-do list for next time) and not far from all of the other parks. This hotel was fantastic for a young child - I couldn't have asked for a better place to stay!

We had a two-bedroom, two-bath unit with a full kitchen, spacious living room area, and screened in balcony porch.

We spent most of the day at the pool (there were actually 2 pools - one with a giant pirate ship with slides, and another smaller pool with a larger slide and a small water park). We ate lunch at the restaurant by the pool (which had amazingly good food at reasonable prices), and played some games in the arcade. Overall it was a great day!

 

Water Week - Update #1

Monday

Trip to the library

It's always difficult for me to skim through the books at the library when I have M with me (which is always). I was smart this time, and pulled up the online catalog on the library website and did a quick search for "water" in the juvenile section on Sunday night. It pulled up a ton of books, so I copied the title and location for about 15 books that were listed as available and printed the list to take with us to the library. I tried to find a good combination of informational books and pleasure books.

When we got to the library I quickly found the two books in the children's section that I knew would have pictures, and set M down in a comfy chair where I could see her while I located the rest. I flipped through and narrowed down my choices until I had several books with experiments to try, as well as a book of poems about water and a couple of stories about boats and swimming. "The Water Gift and the Pig of the Pig" turned out to be a really neat story about using a divining rod to find water, and "Sun Dance Water Dance" has some great illustrations (we have read that three times already!).

We stuck around for "Toddler Tales" to hear some stories and sing songs, then headed back to the car for a "car picnic." We are out of the house so much lately that I always pack a cooler with snacks that we can eat for lunch on the go.

We went straight from the library to a friend's house for a play date. We bought a season pass to the water park that is located right behind our house, and we planned to go together that afternoon.

Water Park / Pool

No "Water Week" would be complete without some swimming! M is just learning to swim and has so much fun at the water park. They have a splash pad area, but mostly she stays in the pool. While we were there we talked about floating - how she can float on her back, and how her life vest floats to keep her above water. We also talked about how her wet feet make footprints on the concrete, but the hot sun quickly heats the water and it evaporates.

 Jello Pops

We wrapped up the day with some frozen Jello popsicles. We actually made these on Sunday, but since we decided to freeze them (which turned out to be a bad idea), we weren't able to eat them until Monday. They were very easy to make:
 

•  Mix up a box of blue Jello. We used this opportunity to get in some practice with measuring. I let M dump the mix into the bowl, then helped her pour in 1 cup of hot water. We mixed it together, and then she measured 1 cup of cold water to add to the bowl. After mixing again, she held the cups while I poured the Jello mixture in to fill the cups about half way.
• We put the cups in the refrigerator for 30 minutes until they were partially set, and then added some Swedish Fish. The cups we had were fairly narrow, so the fish didn't have very much space.
• After we added two fish to each cup, we transferred the cups to the freezer to sit overnight.

Lessons learned:

• Swedish Fish are not very good frozen. They were frozen solid (obviously), and got slimy as they defrosted - yuck!
• Pulling the fish out of the Jello was clearly way more fun than actually eating the popsicle.
• Next time, make the Jello in a big clear bowl and add lots of fish. Regular Jello would be much better (not frozen). Use a spoon (or fingers?) to go fishing!