Babies Walkers to 2 2s to 3s 3s to 4s

Overview and benefit

Children learn about what they can expect to find in rock pools through a bingo style activity.

Equipment required

  • Buckets or containers (one each)
  • Blue/green coloured material, scarves etc
  • Bean bags
  • Laminated bingo cards (there are 5 different versions in the resource file)
  • Laminated photo cards of the different pictures (at least 3 version of each)

Link to resources

Duration

  • Two to three weeks

How it works

Children have a bingo card with 4 photos of things that could be found in a rock pool. They search the ‘rock pools’ around the room to find the matching pictures to put into their buckets.

What to do in the class

Explain to the children what a rock pool is and that you are going rock pooling. Get the children to help you ‘make’ the rock pools. Ask the parents in pairs to create a rock pool around the room using bean bags (give one parent 3 bean bags) and some material (give the other parent some material). You will need 12 rock pools built.

When they are built, hide the small cards under the ‘water’ in each rock pool. Have one rock pool for each ‘thing’ e,g, one for the pebble pictures, one for the fish, one for the seaweed etc.

Give each child a bingo card making sure you use all 5 different versions across the class. Give each child a bucket. Explain that when you go rock pooling you have to be very careful so as not to disturb the rock pool as it is the creatures home, so they need to search their rock pools very gently. Ask them to visit each rock pool in turn and find all the things on their cards.

The resource file contains pictures of:

  • crab
  •  seaweed (2 different types)
  • star fish
  • driftwood
  • razor clam
  • shells (2 different types)
  • fish
  • anemone
  • pebbles
  • seahorse

When the children have collected all their things you can come back into a circle and ask the children what they found. You could ask the children to put all their ‘finds’ into a big bucket so you can return them to the sea later.

Adaptation for older/younger children

This activity is designed for verbal children

What to do in a nursery setting

No adaptation required

Tips