Sea Sponges

On Tuesday we learned about sea sponges...

During circle time we reviewed our colors and color words.  I pointed to a color on our wall and the kids that were wearing that color stood up and swayed their arms as if they were sea sponges in the water...

Next I set out our colored shapes in the center of our circle.  I called one person at a time to swim, crawl, slither, jump (etc.) around them as we sang the following song:

"Swim, swim, swim around the sponge.

Swim, swim, swim around the sponge.

Swim, swim swim around the sponge.

(Name) picks one up!"

(Sung to the tune of "Skip To My Lou.")

The child that was named in the song carried out the movement given and then named the color and shape of the one they chose.

Next, I set out natural sea sponges and green synthetic sponges.  Each child picked up one of each and compared the two.  We noticed that the synthetic sponges are all identical, but the natural sponges are all different from each other.

We watched an interesting video about sea sponges on the computer (recommended by Mother Goose Time).  It was perfect for this age group!  You can find the video here.

We learned that sea sponges come in a rainbow of beautiful colors.  The more light that shines on them, the brighter they appear.  For our craft we sponge painted with out sponges!  Mother Goose provided each child with the ocean background picture paper, sea sponge stencils, and the green synthetic sponge (shown before).  I allowed the kids to paint their project any way they desired.  They could use the stencil or paint directly on the sea sponge cutouts and glue those on their paper.

For our next project we first learned that sea sponges can hold up to 16,000 animals inside of them!  I set out four trays of dirt.  I gave the kids clean kitchen sponges.  First we experimented cleaning the trays of dirt with dry sponges.  The kids were able to slide the dirt, but the sponge did not pick up any of the dirt.

Next, the kids wet their sponges...

They tried wiping the dirt a second time with a wet sponge.  This time the kids were amazed at how much the sponge could pick up!

The kids squeezed their sponges over a coffee filter to drain out the water, but catch what was picked up.  This was cool to look at, but the dirty water that was created was much more amazing to the kids than the coffee filter.

For our next activity, we learned that giant barrel sponges can grow large enough to fit a person inside (over 5 feet tall and over 6 feet wide).  The largest one found was over 8 feet wide!  We looked at these measurements on our tape measure...

Then I asked the kids to find something in the room that they thought they could fit inside.  This was remarkably a great mini exercise because a lot of the kids struggled with finding a spot inside something.  They first hid under, behind, and on top of things.  Eventually, the kids all found good spots to fit inside of something...

I set out four different laundry baskets, and we pretended they were barrel sponges.  I encouraged the kids to guess which items they thought could fit inside each basket and then test their predictions to see if they were correct.

We first predicted how many backpacks could fit inside a smaller laundry basket...

Then we guessed how many backpacks could fit inside a larger laundry basket...

The kids tested BIG items...

...and surprisingly they also even tested little items...

I left the laundry baskets out all day and the kids just had fun playing in them! 

 

For our next activity, we played a graphing game of "Would You Rather..."  These were the questions presented to the kids on the graph...

The kids marked their answer on the graph with a seashell.  After each question was answered, we identified which choice was the most and least popular.  I also chose one person at a time to state the amount for each choice.

The kids also practiced their sight words in their literacy workbook...

They also cut apart sea sponges from their math workbook and placed them in order from smallest to biggest.

This was our book for the day!  It was a perfect book for what we learned about!!!  It reviewed a lot of the content that we had learned about in the video we watched earlier in the day!