Seaside Crafts

Left to their own devices at the beach, little children invariably turn into collectors.  It it is almost impossible to leave a beach without a pocketful of shells, rocks, seaglass, sand dollars and plain old sand too.   But we can't really blame them.  Where else can you find so many fascinating objects, each more lovely and unique than the last, that are free for the taking?

Of course, we try to encourage our little hoarders to leave most of their loot behind, for the beautiful beach's sake.  But on rainy days, you'll be glad for the things that they did bring home.  For many of those precious items can be turned into crafts and keepsakes you'll truly be glad to hold onto for years and years.  Here are a few ideas from our Savvy Activities Encyclopedia to get your little ones started:

• Shell Painting
• Seashell Picture Frame
• Seashell Memory Box
• Rock Family
• Sand Pictures

Best Places to See the Fish (and Other Creatures of the Deep)

Now that your little ones have gotten their fill of playing in tidepools, are learning to swim like fishies, and have had a primer in marine biology, there's only one thing left to do.  Go see the fish! 

If you're nowhere near an aquarium, or have just a few moments to fill with some fish-gazing, there are a number of amazing online exhibits that are fun to share with the little ones.  We particularly like these:

• The Monterey Bay Aquarium online exhibits are very well done, with videos of Giant Octopus feedings for example, or a simple interactive game called Make a Tidepool that is perfect for preschoolers. And that's just a start -- there many more fun fishy tidbits there to fill a rainy hour and please a curious little mind.
• Sydney Aquarium lets the kiddos take a trip all the way Down Under minus the twelve hour plane ride. It too offers many clever online features, including the River Life exhibit on the platypus habitat in which viewers search for the turtles, prawns, water dragons and more by scrolling across a large, intricate image of underwater life.
  
• National Geographic Kids does not disappoint with its outstanding "Creature Features" of species like Clown Anemonefish and Loggerhead Sea Turtles including facts, photos, video and maps.

Who Lives Under the Sea? A Marine Biology Primer for Preschoolers

It is no small part of the giant wonders of the sea that it's just so, well, giant.  Vast.  Deep.  Full to the point of teeming.  And how on earth are we to make sense of any of this for our little preschoolers, who may or may not have ever seen or splashed in an ocean or two but almost certainly don't have any sense of its size. 

A map of the world, of course, helps.  And then once you've established some sense of where all those seas and oceans and lakes and rivers are, you've done some work towards giving your little one a sense of all the water.  But the water itself is only part of the ocean's delight. 

What's in there?  Who lives in the sea?  The best way to learn, marine experts tell us, is to get thyself and thy little one to a tidepool.  Life at the edge is the best entry point.  But if you're looking for a tour that you can conduct from the dry land of your own home, enjoy these wonderful primers on marine biology, from a preschooler's perspective:

Who Lives under the Sea gives you the lay of the land -- uh, the sea, rather.

A Swim through the Sea uses the alphabet to show you around the deep waters.  The juxtaposition of the alphabetical organization and the more extensive vocabulary of the written text makes it especially well-suited for families with different-aged siblings where the younger child is just learning the alphabet while the older is getting deeper into the science.

From the Let's Read and Find Out science series, What Lives in a Shell? gives you a tour in the style of a wonderful early education science book.

Douglas Florian's "divine! delish!" collection of poems about fish and other marine creatures, in the swim, will make you laugh every single time you read it.

Between the Tides tells you all about life in a tide pool, if you can't find one of your own near enough to splash in.

No creature is more adorable than Sea Otters, and the darling pictures in this book will have your little one clamoring for a pet otter immediately!

The ocean does bring so many gifts, and Out of the Ocean catalogs the wonders that the tides bring to those who wait on the shore.

And, finally, Eric Carle's masterpiece, A House for a Hermit Crab is a book we turn to for life lessons about moving and growing and trading old for new and so many life events that our little ones struggle to make sense of every day.  But of course it's also a highly individual tour of life in and near the ocean.  It is a true gem.

Enjoy!

Robert McCloskey's Classic Seacoast Stories

We all have our favorite seaside or lakeside or poolside spots. And we all have children's book authors whom we hold especially dear. When the two come together, it's the perfect recipe for bedtime reading at the end of a long summer's day. Robert McCloskey may be best known for his masterful Make Way for Ducklings. And he may have started his storybook career with an ode to a small town in the midwest much like his own hometown (Lentil). But his heart and four of his best-loved storys were set in Maine. The first three of these tales chronicle his own family's life on a Maine island, while the last takes up the fantastical story of a local character. So coastal and delightful are these books that no matter how far from the ocean you are when you read them, they still give off a whiff of sea air, and, most surely, of summer.

Blueberries for Sal
Sal is a bit scruffy. Her hair hasn’t seen a brush for a few days. Her overall straps keep slipping down. But has a more endearing girl ever toddled across a blueberry field? We think not. Under her author/illustrator father’s adoring yet unsparing gaze, Sal tags along with her mother on a picking expedition, but is too busy gobbling berries to keep up. When she and a blueberry-munching bear cub get their mothers mixed up, a gentle comedy of errors ensues. With its gorgeous blue-black illustrations of the Maine hills and wildlife (the precise color of blueberry juice, you’ll notice), this book remains an enchanting tale of summer and its pleasures.

One Morning in Maine
Little Sal returns to us in this story, but oh, what happened? She’s not so little anymore. We meet her again on the day she loses her first tooth. In case the sight of Sal as a “big girl” sends you into a fit of anticipatory mourning for your own little one’s toddlerhood, she’s got a little sister now named Jane who is just as scruffy and scrumptious as the Sal of yore. And this older, “big girl” Sal remains a charmer. She still talks to the Maine wildlife, showing off her loose tooth to a fish hawk, loon, and seal. And she still has a healthy appetite for sweet things (but in time-honored kid fashion, she’s moved on from blueberries to chocolate ice cream – sound familiar?). We get to meet Dad here too, McCloskey himself, digging for clams and wrestling with a broken outboard motor. The theme here is growing up, and the losses and rewards that come with it, explored in a multitude of small motifs: that loose (and then lost) tooth, a seagull’s feather, a baby clam, a new sparkplug, and ice cream cones all add up to one of the most delightful books we know.

Time of Wonder
McCloskey’s first book in color is the third and last of the series chronicling his family’s Maine summers. Sal and Jane are “big kids” now, exploring the woods together, jumping off ledges into the sea, and handling a small sailboat all by themselves (Sal at the tiller, Jane as first mate). But in a departure from the tidy-storytelling of McCloskey’s other books, here we are taken on a pictorial and poetic tour of an island summer from the children’s point of view, from spring rains to starry nights, to hurricane season and the start of school once more. It’s a beautiful volume, rightfully awarded the Caldecott Medal of 1957, although one your child may enjoy more fully if she is already hooked on Sal and Jane’s adventures. More meditation than narrative, full of nostalgia, the book celebrates not just our summer rituals (whatever they may be), but also the pleasure of watching our children discover their world: a time of wonder, indeed.

Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man: A Tale of the Sea in the Classic Tradition
This may be one of McCloskey’s lesser-known titles, but it’s an absolute gem of which we (and our Savvy kids) are enormously fond. If One Morning in Maine is about growing up, this story’s theme is cheerful aging, and the patching up of our weaker spots. The hero is a retired fisherman turned housepainter whose zest for the sea remains undiminished by the leaky condition of his multicolored boat. Burt goes out deep-sea fishing one day, and in the ensuing adventure, McCloskey lets loose his sense of humor and the absurdist tendencies of his imagination. In what other book, we ask, will you find an old Maine fisherman doing a Jackson Pollack impersonation inside the belly of a whale? Or tenderly bandaging the tip of the tail of said whale (and the tails of a dozen or so of that’s whale’s relatives)? For any young sea-lovers, budding painters, or boo-boo and band-aid-obsessed children in your midst, this is fantastic yarn.

Wise Words from a Poet Who Shares Our "Needs"

We know many a water-obsessed preschooler (and parent) who has just this set of "musts" and "all I asks" -- don't you? 

Wherever the tides take your tall ship, here's wishing you fun with that laughing fellow-rover and, well, exactly what the last line says....

Sea-Fever
by John Masefield

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking
And a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.



from Caroline Kennedy's excellent poetry collections from her mother's favorites, The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, as well as her own favorites for children, A Family of Poems