What To Put In The Sand Our Topic Is Animals

[Guest]

Hi

We are doing a topic on animals at the moment, farm animals and we are moving on to sea animals soon. I need some ideas to how to enhance the sand area. I have tried just putting the animals in the sand but any other ideas would be great.

Thanks a lot.

[AnonyMouse_3735]

for sea animals..

 

we used to make a rock pool in our sand or water tray.. wet sand . puddles of water , then added the rock pool type of creatures.. we had crabs starfish.. shells, rocks, stones, and as we are by the sea I used to get seaweed to add.. but when I lived inland I used cellophane in strips to represent the seaweed..

 

one time we had children bring in items to enhance the area and one brought in a dead crab - stank a bit but all part of the learning process!

 

then as extension to the rock pool idea we explored real fish - had a ball feeling them, picking them up, exploring them, then we used paint on the fish to make a print.. smelling them!

[AnonyMouse_21338]

does it have to be sand ? we've used compost -farm animals, some tractors, trailers, small world people. we have put farm buildings in sand also (with the animals) depend what 'goals' you are covering also -we have put big and small animals, or adult+babies, groups of animals for the children to sort, different coloured animals -brown or black cows, black and white sheep - so differnces /similarities can be compared. we have laminated pictures of different animals we place around the sand area, so they can find the animals in ths sand, or pictures of milk or eggs (or bacon /steak if you are feeling brave !!) so they can find the animals these come from. letter cards -find the animal that begins with the 'sh' or 'c' sound.

 

same sort of thing with the water too - maybe colour the water blue / green. we put ice in if we put penguins or polar bears in. fishing nets , pebbles and shells,