For our final homeschool science project this year I had my kids making a diorama with our pool toys.
{This post is sponsored by Lil’ Fishys, I was compensated for my time, but all opinions are my own, and besides my kids have all gone out and bought extra fish, and my daughter is obsessed with finding another dolphin}
My requirements for our ocean diorama
Since I wanted our diorama to be a review of what we learned I came up with a few requirements:
- must have an ocean floor
- must have plant life
- must include a variety of ocean life (mollusks, jelly fish, fish, sharks, etc)
Actually, my kids got started on the project before I was ready for them to get going. I had in mind our nice clear giant tub.
They grabbed the first tub they could find, and got going. They were pretty excited about playing, I mean learning, with their pool toys.
Persistence in their project
Their first attempt didn’t go so well. I suggested using dirt to make the ocean floor, and that made the water way too muddy looking even after the dirt settled.
So, instead we tried a giant bottle of craft sand. That worked like a charm, especially once it had time to settle down a little bit.
Next they added in a few rocks from our backyard, which looks vaguely like coral.
Their first attempt at adding string to simulate the plant life was terrible, it got all tangled up in their sea life, and didn’t look at all plant like.
But pipe cleaners, now that did the trick, and our aquarium was starting to look like the ocean floor now. We’re almost ready to add their favorite part, the pool toys.
But, there’s one last thing to add before the pool toys, the sea shells! I love sea shells, so I’ve got an extensive collection, and it gave quite a nice touch of realism to our little diorama.
Now came my kids’ favorite part, adding the pool toys. Lil Fishys sent us several fish and a small aquarium. My kids loved them so much they went out and bought a jellyfish, and another dolphin.
They are obsessed with this new swim toy #playmatters #kidsofinstagram
A video posted by Ticia (@ticiam) on
Though, I think the whale is the most hilarious because its’ spout caught us totally off guard the first time we used it. The video is of the kids playing with them in the pool (warning, if you don’t pay attention you will lose the gray shark in the pool and the kids will spend several minutes worriedly looking for their shark, before informing you he swam into the baby area)
So, how did they do using their pool toys to create a diorama?
Pretty darn good after a few course corrections, and they even excitedly narrated a video for me about their aquarium.
This afternoon as I had a friend over, they were excitedly playing with their Lil Fishys pool toys with friends, and much giggling and splashing was heard in the backyard as the 2 and 4 year old happily played with my much older kids. Which, I don’t actually have pictures of because I opted to enjoy spending time with my friend, so instead I give you a picture of my kids playing with them.
Want a chance to win your own Lil’ Fishys?
There’s a whole slew of ways you can do that:
1. Enter the giveaway here on my blog, there are three different winners that will win a surprise package of fishies.
2. Join the Instagram Lil’ Fishys challenge. There’s a couple of more days to join in, or you can be like me and do random batches of pictures for the challenge and get them all out of order.
3. Join the iHomeschool Network twitter party with Lil’ Fishys. If you haven’t joined a Twitter party before they can be really fun way to see what other homeschooling moms are up to right now.
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