Preschool Indoor Beach Party for the Middle of Winter

During the long winter months, try planning an indoor beach day full of fun activities, games, songs, crafts and more all surrounding the beach theme. This beach day would work well within a preschool lesson plan on opposites, an ocean theme, as well as traveling and the world.

Staging an Indoor Beach Day In the Preschool Classroom

It is important for any preschool party to set the stage. For this theme fill the room with beach towels, beach umbrellas, sand buckets and shovels, beach chairs, sunglasses, seashells, pictures of the beach, palm trees painted onto paper, empty suntan lotion bottles, water bottles. Play music in the background that has waves or perhaps a steel band drum. Have bright color balloons and steamers up, such as yellow and orange to bring in the sunshine effect. If possible put the heat up in the preschool classroom to not only help with setting the scene, but to make a more comfortable temperature for beach attire. In a parent's newsletter, inform the parents to dress their children in beach clothes for the day.  

Sensory Table with a Beach Theme

The sensory table is a great place to feature the beach and if possible, have both sand and water sensory activities.

Water: place blue food coloring into the water set up, seashells, plastic fish, glass beads, plastic boats, water wheel, sieves

                                                     

Sand: seashells, buckets, shovels, container with lids, plastic crabs, small rocks, play coins

  

Beach Preschool Crafts

Beach Scene: A beach scene can be created by the preschoolers with broken shells, sand and cut out pictures or store bought foam pieces of such things as the sun, a shovel and bucket, sun umbrella and so on. Make sure to have a tray to catch all the sand that does not attract to the glue.

Sand in a bottle: Provide each child with a small empty bottle and different color sand, which can easily be made with sand and powder paint. Allow the children to make layers of sand inside and perhaps also some small shells to place in between the layers.

Ocean: Any ocean crafts will work well for a indoor beach theme. One suggestion is to create a fish template out of a paper plate, then provide shiny cellophane paper, tissue and/or wrapping paper cut into small pieces for gluing onto the fish to create colorful scales.



                                                            

Preschool Games for a Beach Theme

These games are versions from classic preschool games:

•Lifeguard Where is Your Whistle?: a version of Doggy Doggy Where is Your Bone.

•Beach Sharades: provide children with ocean animals and/or activities that would occur at the beach.

•Bucket, Bucket, Shovel: this is a version of duck, duck, goose

•Whose under the Beach Blanket?

•Find the Seashell: creating a scavenger hunt to find the seashell or seashells.

Preschool Songs and Poem for Indoor Beach Party

To the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

I love the beach, oh yes I do

I love the beach, how about you

Jumping in the water with sand in my toes

Lying on my towel, the sun on my nose

I love the beach, oh yes I do

I love the beach, how about you?

Another song that can be done with actions is to get five children to lie in the middle of the circle on a big beach towel:

Five on the towel, and the little one said,

Roll over, roll over

So they all rolled over, and one fell out...

For a fun ocean poem to tell on the Indoor Beach Party which works well on a felt board and is great for learning math concepts:

Five little sea creatures on the ocean floor.

The lobster walked away, and now there are four.

Four little sea creatures living in the sea.

The octopus crept away and now there are three.

Three little sea creatures wondering what to do.

Good-bye said the starfish and now there are two.

Two little sea creatures not having much fun.

Off swam the seahorse, now there is one.

One little hermit crab, sad and all alone.

Back came the seahorse, back came the starfish,

back came the octopus, back came the lobster.

Then they all went home.

Preschool Snacks 

Some great preschool snack ideas for a beach theme involve thinking about what we would all eat on a hot, sunny day. Some ideas are:

• fruit popsicles
• ice cream sandwiches
• smoothies
• watermelon
• ice cream cones with frozen yogurt
• lemonade
• popcorn
• fish crackers

An indoor beach party provides a fun day for preschoolers and will liven and warm up a winter month that depending on the location, can often hold some dreary and cold weather.

Online Early Childhood Workshops with Circle of Ideas 

Rainbow Fish Craft Ideas: Printable Template

The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister is a story about a fish with sparkly, shimmering scales, who initially will not share his scales with the other fish. He soon realizes it is better to share his scales and have friends to play with, then to be alone. This story plot relates well to a young child's life and having a theme, whether for a day or longer, all around The Rainbow Fish, can be enjoyed within any early childhood environment. The theme may be incorporated into other lesson plans, such as an ocean theme, rainbow and color lessons, and with discussions about friendship and sharing. The following article provides a craft, drama, song and cooking activity for The Rainbow Fish preschool theme.


Rainbow Fish Craft Ideas

Provide each child the outline of the rainbow fish, whether you use this template to cut out fish shapes with color construction paper, or copy and past the template and make prints. Following are different ideas to create a rainbow fish.

• tissue paper cut into pieces
• construction or card paper cut into pieces
• recycled candy wrappers
• old birthday cards
• wrapping paper
• buttons
• tin foil pieces
• beads
• rhinestones/jewels
• bingo markers
• sponge painting

When the young children finish gluing the scales onto the small paper plate, the fins, tail and googly eye can be attached as needed to finish the project.


**Alternatively, toddlers could use bingo markers for the scales.

A Drama Activity for a Rainbow Fish Theme

Try having the young children act out the story in a large space, such as a gym or fenced in yard. Each child will be given his role by having a letter taped onto his/her body. The fish characters will have the letter F , which can be many more than the book displays. There is a starfish and octopus in the book, which again, can be extended with other sea creatures, to provide more characters for the children to act out and use their imagination. The child who is selected to be the rainbow fish might wear a shirt with scales attached to it. The scales can be attached with material and thread or fabric paint. The shiny scales must be attached with a devise that can be removed by a preschool hand, such as Velcro. As the story is being narrated by the adult, the rainbow fish will eventually give a shiny scale away to each child who is a fish swimming around.

Rainbow Fish Preschool Song

Singing some songs to correlate to The Rainbow Fish theme will inevitably work well with a group of young children. Aside from singing some classic ocean songs, like "Slippery Fish" by Charlotte Diamond, singing songs about a rainbow would work as well. The following rainbow fish song is sung to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star":



A rainbow fish in the sea

All the colors, a sight to see.

Red and yellow, green and blue

Yellow, orange, purple too

A rainbow fish in the sea

All the colors, a sight to see.

Preschool Cooking Activity: Rainbow Bagel

For an activity involving food, and preparing a snack to eat, try providing each child with a small bagel. Then make small dishes of different colored cream cheese, created by using a small amount of food coloring. Each child can enjoy spreading different colors of cream cheese onto his/her bagel to create a rainbow snack. This activity is not only fun, but also fosters fine motor development and self help skills.



You might also like....


Rainbow Fish Felt Board Story

Online Early Childhood Workshops with Circle of Ideas