Ice Fishing

Looking for something different to fill your sensory tub with during a unit on Penguins or Winter Animals?  In this activity your little ones can pretend to be penguins and go "ice" fishing for thier food!  Just fill your sensory tub with packing peanuts (ice) and foam fish (penguin food) and encourage your little penguins to start fishing!

 Materials:  Sensory tub (or box), packing peanuts, foam sheets, tongs, scissors, sharpie

 Draw a fish shape on the upper left hand corner of a foam sheet. 

 Fold foam sheet in half.

 Fold in half one more time.

 Cut out fish shape.

 You should have four fish.  Cut out as many as you please.  Of course, the more children you have the more fish you should cut.

 You may also decorate them if you please.  If you want the search to be more difficult, cut fish out of white foam sheets.

 Hide the fish under the "ice".

 Make sure they are well hidden.

 Invite children to the center to go "ice fishing".  Provide each child with tongs. Using tongs is not only fun for them, it also strengthens their fine-motor skills.

 Children try finding fish using their tongs. You can give them a net or other container to set their fish in and then have them count how many fish they have found.

You can also program the fish with numbers, letters, or whatever you are practicing.

 If you have programmed fish with letters and numbers, children can categorize them accordingly and then put them in order.  Happy Fishing!!

Penguin Positional Words!

Make snack-time fun AND educational by using goldfish crackers to practice positional words! Let your child/ren color a penquin coloring sheet and then practice using positional words to place the goldfish crackers on to the penquin accordingly.  Any coloring sheet with a single, fairly large penguin would work, however, I will also post the one I used.  After children are finished with this activity they can enjoy their goldfish snack!

Materials: Penguin coloring sheet, goldfish crackers, crayons or markers.

                                                    

This is the actual coloring sheet I used.  You should be able to right click and somehow print it. If not, I'm sure if you Google "penguin coloring sheet" something should show up!

 Here is the finished coloring sheet.  As you could tell, I colored this.  Remember, it is not important for young children to stay in the lines and color everything the "right" color.  If they want to make the penquin purple...so be it!  The color of penguins is not the focus of this activity.  Forcing these types rules onto young children will only discourage them from doing the activity. Instead just lead them to do "their best work".

 After they have finished coloring you can then give them the directions using the positional words. 
Ex. "Place a fish ON the penguin's tummy."

 "Place a fish ABOVE the penguin's head."

 "Place a fish BESIDE the penquin's flipper."

 "Place a fish BELOW the penquin's foot."

                                                

 "Place a fish NEXT to the penguin's beak."

As you can see I capitalized the positional words.  Try to emphasize them when you are giving the directions.  Also, you might want to review the penguin's body parts before you give the directions to make sure they all know what a beak, flipper, etc. are.

                                                     Enjoy!!