Little Tide Pools

To go along with our beach theme, we learned about tide pools. I read the book One Small Place by the Sea, by Barbara Brenner.

It not only explains what a tide pool is and what lives there, but it describes what happens in a tide pool. I found it very interesting. I had a vision of a tide pool craft in my head so I set out to get all my materials. I needed a plate that had a nice solid rim. I found these at Walgreens:

They were the only ones there that had a rim, so I bought them. But the bonus was that they were tan, like sand. Then I googled coloring pages of some of the things that live in a tide pool. I saved the images on my computer and printed them out in a small size.

We had a hermit crab, sea anemone, snail, mussels, starfish and shells. We ended up not using the larger starfish because it took up too much room on the plate. In the morning, the kids colored the pictures with crayons. They could color as many as they wanted. It was their own little tide pool and they could have whatever they wanted living in it. Then I cut the pieces out (mostly cutting around the object and not following the lines exactly because that would have taken too long) and put them on a plate with the child's name. Later in the day, the kids glued the pieces to the inside of their plate.

Then I used blue cellophane paper to cover the plate. (I bought a roll of it from Michaels several years ago, put it in my closet and never used it. I was so happy to finally have a use for it!) I cut a square slightly bigger than the plate and used a glue stick on the rim of the plate. I then flipped it over onto the cellophane and pressed on the rim.

Then I trimmed it. I wasn't sure if the glue stick would hold, but it worked perfectly.

The kids loved their tide pools and enjoyed showing their parents what was living inside!