D is for Dolphin. Spatial Sense - in the Coral Reef.

Coral Reef: Treasure Hunt

Coral Reef cupcakes were a reward for our letter of the week activities! Kids pretended to be dolphins swimming around the coral reef. They practiced following spatial sense instructions while hunting for the treasure in the sea.

The Undersea Treasure Hunt

The activities were to bring to life the prettiest book: "The Undersea Treasure Hunt" by Sue Harris. Dolphin, our main character for the letter of the week, went hunting for hidden treasures.

This lift the flap book is gorgeous! The flaps - cut outs in beautiful sea weed patterns - cover the shimmering jewels and silver that turn into sea creatures when kids lift the flaps. At the end, readers discover that there is a treasure "far more beautiful" than jewels. It is a coral reef - home for so many!

What a special thing we have -

a garden in the sea!

A coral reef bursting with life

as precious as can be!

Spatial Sense Preschool Activities

We had our own treasure hunt at sea. Kids pretended to be dolphins swimming around the coral reef. We gave them instructions from the list below.

Developing spatial sense is a part of preschool math. In a way, it's not that easy even for adults to find the suitable space for themselves in relation to the world around, lol. For kids, it's understanding of location and position, movement, and distance.

Location and position:
in, out, on, on top of, on the bottom, off, in front of, behind, above, under, right, left,
here/there,
first, next, last.

Movement:
up, down, forward, backward, through, around, across, over.

Distance:
near/far, nearer/farther,
high/low.

D is for Dolphin

For this activity, we needed dolphins and a coral reef. Dolphin - a laminated picture. Pictured above, our coral reef is made from a box.

The wider side
I cut out stripes between the colors for added fun. The colors are made of construction paper. Then I covered the whole side with the contact film, sticky side out for the collage activities - our favorite at a time. I prepared different materials with the colors from the book: pieces of ribbon, feathers, pictures, pieces of paper with interesting textures, and stickers.

The top of the box
Two rows of holes are premade for inserting the prompts on sticks we had.

Two narrow sides
I cut out the openings for crawling through. I covered one with the ribbons. The other side is covered with the blue mash-like wrapping paper - that should be pretty to look through while sitting in the box.

I covered the forth side with the multicolored wrapping paper. We used that side for stickers.

 Coral Reef Cupcakes

These cupcakes were the found treasure at the end of our hunting. We usually try to avoid colored frosting. This time was a beautiful exception from this rule for the occasion.

 

Well, in case you are wondering, the cupcakes got 2 names: "Coral Reefs", or "Princess Cupcake Castles".  To this day, it remains unknown: which name is true? What do you think?

 

 

Happy Treasure Hunting!

You can find our collection of the Letter of the Week books and activities here: Creative ABCs.

You are very welcome to follow us here:

Facebook

Pinterest

Google+

Twitter