It’s the end of the first week of Story Book Summer here on Rainy Day Mum and the last of our book based activities on the theme of Under The Sea. Today I’m welcoming Viviana from Totschooling who is going to share an activity based on the book “I’m the biggest thing in the ocean” a fantastic book for Toddlers and Preschoolers.
Hi! I’m Viviana, a mom to two little girls – a toddler and a preschooler. I have a background in graphic design, so I create a lot of educational printable activities for my kids, and also share them on my blog at Totschooling. We love reading books and doing hands-on activities to develop a better understanding of the concepts in each book.
One of our favorites is I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry. This is a great book for young children and toddlers because the graphics are bold and bright, and the story is very simple with few words. The basic concept is something that toddlers are beginning to get a grasp of – size!
The story is narrated by a giant squid who thinks he is the biggest thing in the ocean. He swims around the ocean proclaiming that he is bigger than each creature that he encounters. He is indeed bigger than all the other creatures, except one! Unfortunately, I’m going to spoil the hilarious ending for you by showing you this activity, but I promise you will still love the book.
For this activity, I gathered images of all the sea creatures mentioned in the book. You can download them here. All you have to do is print out the sheets, laminate them if you wish for durability (or adhere them to cardboard if you don’t have a laminator), then cut out each sea creature. You will have 8 creature “cards” and one sheet with just a whale on it. After reading the book, here is what we did with them:
- We looked at each sea creature card and said the name of each one. This is a good exercise for language and vocabulary development, reinforcing the names of sea creatures.
- We put all the sea creatures in size order from biggest to smallest. We did all 8 cards with my 3 year old, but you can modify the activity for younger kids by using less cards. This is a great activity to reinforce the concepts of size and size relationships.
- Wondering what the whale is for? Well here is the spoiler: the whale is actually the biggest thing in the ocean! He swallows all the creatures, including the giant squid, and they all hang out in the whale’s belly. So I thought it would be a cute activity to tape the image of the whale to a box, and make an opening where my daughter could slide each creature card in. This way all the creatures end up in the whale’s belly, just like in the book!
This was by far the most fun activity. My daughter repeated it over and over again. Great fine motor skill practice, and you can reinforce the names of each creature again while your child “feeds” each one to the whale.
I hope you enjoy this book activity!
You can find more book activities at Totschooling:
Board Book Printables for Toddlers
Are You My Mother? Printable Book activity
It Looked Like Spilt Milk: Book Activities
Viviana is a blogging mom to a toddler and a preschooler, sharing ideas and resources for early learning. She specializes in educational printable activities, which you can find on her blog Totschooling. You can also follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google+.
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