{Learning Topics} Under The Sea

So, the second week in our summer learning topics was "Under The Sea".  I gave M the choice from about four different topics and this is the one she chose, mainly because it would include a trip to the aquarium!!

Our week started with learning the names of some "Under The Sea" creatures using the printable banner and sea creature printable from SparkleBox...

Next we made an under the sea picture by painting bubble wrap with green and blue paint and printing it onto a huge piece of paper.  L, especially had fun with this and she was printing bubbles all over the place!

I let M cut out some fish shapes and coral and decorate them with glitter to stick on our scene...

L did some writing practice, which I was really impressed with!  We've been working on her pencil grip this summer as she starts nursery in September (which I believe is the same Pre-Kindergarten in the States) and not only did she totally get how to hold the pencil, she managed to control it to draw along the dotted lines too!  Not bad for three and a half :)  

For writing practise M wrote some paragraphs about Octopuses as she decided this was here favourite animal (for that day!).  

Then came our trip to the aquarium.  The girls were thrilled with this as they love anything animal related.  M was really interested in the names of the fish as well as seeing some of the things we'd learnt about, including an Octopus and Seahorses (my personal favourite!).

Of course no Under The Sea project would be complete without watching Finding Nemo, The Little Mermaid and The Reef on DVD, which we did, twice!!

I wish we'd completed a few more craft projects for this topic (I had some toilet roll octopuses all lined up ready to make!) but we had a few play dates with friends booked in for the week just flew past us. 

Next week I think we're doing On The Farm, but as yet its to be decided!

{Learning Topics} The Weather

So far so good! We're managing to keep up with our topics, have fun, and learn, which is kinda the point of having a "themed" summer holiday.

Our first theme was The Weather.  I thought this would be a good one to start with as I had a few crafty projects in mind, a few learning projects and lets be honest, its and easy topic of conversation!

Our first thing to do was put together our Weather Chart.  L, being the littlest, could easily get involved with this one as all she had to do was look out the window and say what the weather was like!  She then picked the correct symbol to stick onto the chart each morning. M had the more tricky bit of finding out the temperature from the thermometer on my phone, filling in the temperature and colouring in the thermometer.  

Sometimes our weather chart had three different symbols on it and truly reflected the British weather!  

We had some weather words to learn and I wanted M to go a bit more in depth with it seeing as she knows sun, rain, snow etc, so I printed off some of the different types of clouds for her to learn which she enjoyed cos lets face it, when you're seven you think there's pretty much only one type of cloud!

M had some comprehension to do which is new to her in school but I was keen to keep it up in the holidays.  I didnt want to make it too complicated for her (or for me to set up) so I printed out the Doctor Foster poem.  L coloured it in and M read it out loud, then had some questions to answer about the poem.

Time for our crafty project!  Now Im not big on mess so I let the girls choose what they would like to do...make a cloud from cotton wool or hand print suns using paint.  They chose the suns of course!

See?  Mess!  They loved it though and the result was two lovely bright suns to brighten up our Learning Wall!

All that, combined with lots of pool play and walks to the park, took us up to Thursday then Friday was pack up and ship out for a week at Nannie's house, but think we achieved a very good first week of the holidays!

We start a new theme tomorrow and I've decided our theme will be Under The Sea.  Mainly because the weather is set to be rubbish so we can do a lot of indoor projects and also, Im dying to visit the aquarium again!  You can take a peek at a couple of things we're going to be doing over on my Pinterest board.