Starfish activity for kids

 

 

You remember how ages and ages ago I asked for recommendations about a starfish activity for kids, and then I lost my camera with the pictures of what we did?

 

Well I found it.  Or more accurately, when I made the kids clean out the dog’s toy box of all of their stuff they found it.  My guess, I had them clean and they put it all in the dog’s toy box.

 

Needless to say I was not a happy Mommy.

 Starfish activity 1: Study an actual starfish

Our first starfish activity looked as the starfish my Mother-in-Law had given us from a trip she took and picked up for them.  I’ve been holding on to these for quite some time.  We noticed the little bumpy things on the bottom and talked about how those are little suction cups that let the starfish move around.

 

After we poked around and looked at them under a magnifying glass, I said we were going to try and see what the bumpy parts were like on the starfish.  Then one at a time I ushered my unsuspecting kids into the bathroom and they got to play with the plunger in the toilet for a starfish activity.

Starfish activity 2: try out a “starfish sucker”

After I was suitably disgusted by their fascination (and they now think of the least excuse why the bathroom needs the plunger, racing downstairs to get it), and they managed to not cover my bathroom floor with water.  We continued on to the next starfish activity.

 Starfish activity 3: starfish craft

Then we cut out a starfish from sandpaper and recorded our observations of what it felt like to try and move like a starfish.  We did a similar craft before, a couple of years ago for our ocean animals book.

 

I’d like to thank: Fantastic Five, Alex Nguyen Portraits, Books 4 Learning, and Enchanted Homeschooling Mom for all coming up with some fun ideas to do.  Between all of their ideas, links, and suggestions I could have spent a couple of weeks on starfish, unfortunately my kids interest level was not as high as mine.

 

Does anyone else ever run into the problem of being more interested in a topic than their kids are?

Let’s see what others did this week:

Fantastic Five combined science and art for a fun astronomy lesson.

I loved the idea of using a rolling pin for a pulley from Quirky Momma.

 

 

 

Dottie’s Homeschool Universe shared about rocks and how they’re formed.

 

 

 

Don’t forget to have a link back here somewhere on your front page.

 

Oh, and one last request: If you have any posts, old or new, about land animals I’d love to see them linked up.  We’re going to be studying land animals next and my land animals pinterest board is rather sparse.