Under the sea

I have been trying to pick a theme and go with it for a while and I finally settled on one!  Under The Sea.  I have so many craft ideas running through my head.  I found a lot of things at the dollar store and used things we already had to make up a theme 'basket'.  Here are a few things that I included in it:  Under the sea counting puzzles (dollar store), themed grow capsles (dollar store), foam bath fish (dollar store), Stella Star of The Sea (a book we already own and LOVE), fishing rods (we already own), ocean themed snacks (pretty much gold fish just more shapes).

Today I decided to make hand print crabs.  I have seen this craft in a few places....I just can't remember them.  I forgot to pin it, silly me!  

We had lots of fun with this one.  It is really simple.  All you need is paint, paper, googly eyes, and some little hands! :)  I painted the kids hands and we put them on the paper and I let them put the glue and eyes on.  They turned out super cute!

It turns out Little Princess wasn't the most cooperative with spreading her hands out :)

We also did the number puzzles from the dollar store.  They were super easy for Little Monkey but he enjoyed 'teaching' Little Cousin how to put puzzles together and helped count all the objects on each set.  I mixed them up for Little Monkey (once they were assembled) and got him to put them in order 1-5.  He got it pretty quick but did try to put 4 before 5.  We talked about what comes after 3.... '4 not 5 mommy, that was silly!'.  He is quite the character.

After the puzzle's we read Stella - Star of The Sea by Marie - Louise Gay.  I love this series of books and we have 5 of them.  There is also a Stella and Sam show on Disney Jr. which is really good as well.  I enjoy this series because Stella is always eager to answer Sam's questions and he is always included in everything they do.  Little Monkey knows all the words to this particular story (well actually he knows the words to pretty much all the books we own), so he helped me 'read' it!  On the very last page, Stella, Sam, and their dog Fred are in the water being starfish, so we decided to lay on the floor and try and be starfish!  Little Monkey and Little Cousin thought this was so funny.  They each took turns laying down and being a starfish and then it was my turn.  They would just giggle when it was their turn and shout 'look at me I'm a starfish!'.  

Tomorrow we are going to try out those themed grow capsules and foam shapes in the water table.  There are no pictures on the capsules so I will be just as surprised as they are! :)  

We are also going to try painting with combs.  It will be another exciting day!