Ocean life is fascinating and beautiful. Sea turtles, whales, sharks, and jelly fish are amazing creatures to learn about, especially for our children. Children love to swim and they love animals, so why not teach them about animals that live under water! These ocean activities for toddlers are super fun, but they will teach your toddler as well. Motor skills, communication, creativity, and learning are encouraged all through play. Let’s dive into our ocean activities!
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Book Recommendations for ocean activities for toddlers:
Toy Recommendations:
As always, we love the realism of the Schleich animals for our play time.
Ocean activities for toddlers:
This Ocean in a Jar activity was inspired by National Geographic Kids. It was a fun activity from beginning to end! The mixing, splashing, and creating of the jar was so fun for Little Miss. She also loved playing with the jar after it was done! For bigger kids, it could also be a great educational activity!
Have you ever done salt painting? You are in for a sensory treat! Check out this post to see how to make a salty octopus…or any other ocean animal!
Making coffee filter jellyfish was a great arts and crafts project for Little Miss. She learned about the shape of jellyfish and how they swim. We also learned a new skill: dying coffee filters!
See how to make your own awesome jellyfish mobile here.
Dying fabric is a fun project for all ages, including moms and dads! After dying the fabric you have a wonderful addition to your creative play supplies!
Learn how to dye fabric the easy way here.
Water play is excellent for toddlers. The sensory experience of water running through their fingers, combined with a stimulating activity can provide entertainment and learning opportunities.
For this sensory bin, we kept it very simple. I added water to our bin with all the animals from the story of the day: 10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle. As we read our story, Little Miss found the animals and played with them. At the end we had creative play time with the water bin.
With this 2-part seal painting, explore a new way to add texture to paint and enjoy experimenting with water color. Depending on your kiddo’s needs, you can split this over 2 days or complete the project in one longer creative play time.
See how to do this project here.
This was our first project using homemade puffy paint and it was a blast. As you can see, we couldn’t make just starfish, but we also made seashells. Experiment with adding different textures and designs to your project for even more fun!
See how to make it here.
Make a beautiful ocean-inspired painting with your kiddos! Provide a blank canvas or paper, paint, and a variety of painting tools and allow them to experiment with texture and technique. Play ocean sounds in the background to facilitate creative thinking!
Check out some of our other toddler arts and crafts projects here:
