Creative-Mommy

Please note, these three are all my own creations. Aside from some templates I borrowed from other resources, the ideas and executions were mine.

You can see Rainbow Ootopus. His body is made of blue felt. Just a large oval shape with a flat body. I added googly eyes, a pom-pom nose and a magic marker smile. Then I took and cut eight legs from various colors of felt. I found buttons in corresponding colors (except for the white leg- it has a black button) and sewed them on by hand in evenly spaced intervals. Then I cut a slit in each leg so I can be buttoned onto the body. This is a great fine motor skills game, as well as a way to teach colors and counting. Very hands on.

I made an Oceans of the World file folder game. I took a simple map of the Oceans of the World. This is in fact, the map we will be using for several of our activities. I printed out one copy with the ocean names, and another copy with the names erased (thank goodness for art pad huh?). I colored them identically and glued the labeled map to the top half of the file folder and the unlabled map to the bottom half. Then I took an index card and make small lables for the oceans. Rather than just having 5 labels and a zip-loc bag, I once more broke out the magnets and attatched a magnet in the correct positions as well as magnets on the back of the lables. It makes for a very sturdy game that is movable in its pieces, but strong enough to handle being shifted around. And if by some change we do lose a lable, they are very easy to replace.

The final game on this post is one I call How Fish Use Camouflage. I took a file folder (one of the long ones) and taped it open, then covered it with blue construction paper. I then took sea creatures and habitat features and cut them from different colors, patterns and textures of materials. I cut a starfish and two rocks from sandpaper, a manta ray and coral from craft foam, a killer whale and coral from a foam veggie tray, a shark and seaweed from bubble paper I colored blue, an eel and seaweed from a polka-dotted piece of tag board I had from who knows what and an octopus and coral from plastic canvas (very cheap and we will use it for another craft). I colored the octopus and coral purple. I then tacked the file folder to the wall and again, using magnets (I figured it would be easier to play with than having it flat and losing pieces) I put a magnet on the back of each sea creature and a magnet on the front of each piece of coral, rock and seaweed. This allows the kids to play with various textures of creature vs camo and they can see what works and what doesn't. It will also be a great tool when we study camouflage. Some of you might remember a smaller version of this I made for insects. It just highlights a very important survival technique for ocean animals.

While these games are a touch on the time-consuming side to make, they do provide a great hands-on opportunity for kids and I find them very well worth it.