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There’s something about ocean animals that gets young students excited about learning! In this post, I’m going to share some of fun ocean animal activities for kindergarten. These hands-on and engaging activities will help your students practice a variety of math and literacy skills as they learn more about the ocean!
These ocean animal activities are a great way to incorporate more science into your school day. With everything our students are learning in language arts and math, it can be tricky to fit everything into daily lesson plans! These kindergarten ocean animal activities incorporate other content area practice to make the most of your instructional time.
There are so many interesting facts that students can learn about sea turtles!
After you read a non-fiction book about sea turtles together as a class, students can write and illustrate their favorite fact about sea turtles. Then, they can create this adorable sea turtle craft to put on top. The end result is an adorable lift-the-flap sea turtle craft!
There are so many interesting varieties of fish! You can choose a nonfiction book to read with your class. Students can record their favorite fact about fish with writing craftivity.
After reading “The Rainbow Fish” as a class, students can create their own rainbow fish to go along with their writing.
This missing number activity is a fun way to help students practice counting by one, five, and ten.
For some fish-themed math practice, students can practice addition and subtraction with this lift-the-flap activity! They will match each fish to the correct addition or subtraction equation.
Your students will also love this fish-themed addition and subtraction card game! Students will take turns flipping over one of their fish cards containing an addition or subtraction equation. After calculating the answer, students will decide which one is greater and the student with the larger number gets to keep both cards.
After completing their own shark craftivity with a fun fact about sharks, you can read “Clark the Shark Dares to Share” by Bruce Hale. Students can create their own craft to accompany a page of writing about how they will share like Clark!
A hungry shark also makes engaging, hands-on subtraction practice! Students can use a shark subtraction mat to model different equations. They can continue this practice with another hungry shark subtraction activity!
Students can share their favorite facts about whales with this adorable craftivity. Then, they can identify missing addends by acting out a hungry whale scenario with ten goldfish crackers.
A hungry whale can also serve as inspiration for subtraction practice in this mini-reader!
Kindergarten students love to talk about dolphins!
After creating a fun dolphin craft, students can also look for the dolphin on this ocean animal color by code activity. This is great addition and subtraction practice!
Crabs are another fun ocean animal to learn about in kindergarten! After creating an All About Crabs writing craftivity, you can read “A House for Hermit Crab” by Eric Carle.
After reading the story, students can practice sequencing as they put the different sea creatures in the order the hermit crab meets them and adds them to his shell. Students can also write about what they would use to decorate the hermit crab’s shell.
You can even have students decorate their own hermit shell craft to go along with their writing!
These adorable paper crab manipulatives are perfect for modeling ocean animal word problems! This interactive subtraction stories book is great way to bring some extra engagement to math practice.
Students can start by writing and illustrating a fact about octopuses to go with this adorable octopus craft.
You can read “Tickly Octopus” by Ruth Galloway and then have students create this fun writing craftivity!
You can also bring some octopus fun to math practice! Students can add tentacles to an octopus to show how many more they need to get to eight. They can also practice addition in word problem form with paper octopus manipulatives.
Students are always so interested in the fact that the shells that they find in the sand were once homes to animals!
You can add some clam-themed activities to your math practice. Students can match addition and subtraction equations to each number on this printable math activity.
Your students will also love playing addition and subtraction bingo! They will add a number to each clam and starfish on their Bingo cards. This is a great way to ensure unique cards while giving students a chance to practice number formation!
Students can also practice addition and subtraction as they play this Under the Sea Adventure board game!
After learning about all of the different ocean animals, students will be ready to vote on their favorite!
Your students can record their votes on a class graph. Then they can record and interpret the data on their own graphing worksheet.
Students can also create a fun writing craftivity to share about their favorite ocean animal!
Another fun ocean animal activity is this class book inspired by “Splash in the Ocean!” by Mik Zepol. Students can learn more about nouns and verbs as they write and illustrate their own page for the class book.
All of the ocean animal activities shown above (and more!) can be found in one easy-to-download ocean unit study for kindergarten. You can use these hands-on and engaging activities to plan a fun thematic unit for your students. This resource even includes a helpful PDF that outlines a suggested sequence for these activities.
If you’d like to take a closer look at all of the ocean animal activities included in this resource, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.
Be sure to save this post if you’d like to come back to these fun kindergarten ocean animal activities! Just add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these activities whenever you’re ready to plan an ocean thematic unit! You might also be interested in looking at my Earth Day activities for kindergarten if you want your students to learn more about how to protect the environment, including the animals in our oceans.
These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
