Free Homeschool Unit Studies:
Ocean Creatures

Our free homeschool unit studies bring water and ocean creatures together to make an irresistible combination for any kids aged 5-7 – so long as you don't mind the bathroom getting wet!

Take your kids to meet ocean creatures with homeschool unit studies. Free lesson plans, coloring pages, experiments and an ocean diorama.

* Free lesson plans for all ages.

* Free Action Pack with printable sea creatures you can color in.

Like all our free homeschool unit studies, you will actually cover a whole range of learning 'targets.'

Depending on where your child's interest take you, you'll cover science, geography, art and craft and reading - all in one go!

Ocean Unit Study

"Just want to give a great big shout out THANK YOU for the Ocean Unit Study....I wish I could hug you right now because you just made this overwhelmed mama's morning!" ~ Jennifer

Teaching children is easy when you get them on your side. We love this ocean creatures project.

make an ocean diorama
pinteres

This is a great project to combine with making an Ocean Diorama.

The free Action Pack has coloring pages of sea creatures which you can color in and add to your ocean unit studies, as well as beautiful photos of sea creatures.

You can get your free Action Pack on this page and use it to make a wonderful Ocean Scene.

Make an ocean diorama

So, where do you start?

With your child, of course! You have to go where your child's interest is and adapt this ocean creatures homeschool Unit Study to them.

ocean collage

First, we took the largest sheet of poster cardstock we could buy. BIG is always best with small children. Wallpaper lining paper would be great.

mackerel ocean scene

As you can see, we've painted the waves on the card and then got messy sticking our fingers in paint to make white fingerprint 'wave crests.'

We've used crinkly shredded paper to make homeschooling seaweed and cut out a big blue whale which the children have drawn on.

shells

How about going down to the beach – there's lots of free homeschooling stuff just waiting on the tide line to be collected!

Make A Jellyfish

Make a Jellyfish

Natascha and her 5-year-old children had a great idea. How about starting your Ocean Unit with a Jellyfish?

"We made jellyfish using half a paper plate, pipe cleaners (chenille stems), and beads stuck on the plate."

~ Natascha, Courageous Homeschooling Facebook group

Take a look - easy, fun to do and looks really good.

Natascha's family also made a coral reef using different coloured homemade playdough.

"We also used oceans to look at food chains and what happens if their is a decrease of something due to environmental issues.  The result was that when we went on vacation a few weeks later they insisted that I swam into the sea to collect floating plastic. They also picked up any rubbish they saw on the beach!" ~ Natascha

Ocean Creatures

Sequins make great eyes for an octopus:

octopus

Or you could put them on fish and add some flower shapes and gold barring for scales:

fish with sequin eye
yellow fish with flowery scale

You'll see from my affordable homeschooling advice, there is one area I don't think you should skimp on. Top quality craft materials are a must for homeschool unit studies or any other projects you work on, like our model solar system.

Ocean creatures look good in felt too! Here's a hammerhead shark:

hammerhead shark

Homeschooling Unit Studies Activities

Free Lesson Plans

Smithsonian Institute Ocean Portal

The Smithsonian Education Ocean Portal is a fantastic learning resource which you can use to back up your homeschool Unit Studies.

You'll find:

  • Lesson Plans, including an introduction to Coral Reefs (grades 3-5, 6-8)
  • An Activity Book
  • More complex issues for older kids like a lesson where students investigate the relationship between the size of the wave and depth to which the effects of its energy can be observed.  (Grades 6-8 covering Earth Science and Physical Science)
How big is a blue whale?
  • National Geographic is also great for all ages.  Find great facts, photos and videos of ocean creatures from the bottlenose dolphin to sharks and emperor penguins.
  • It also has a photo gallery of the Pacific with facts on the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. 
  • It has activities like making your own waves and the Earth's water cycle.  Highly recommended.
Ocearch

"I used Ocearch when we were studying the ocean. It has a great free curriculum divided up by grades as well as STEM packets."

~ Dawn, Courageous Homeschooling Facebook group

You can also follow sharks in real time on the Ocearch tracker which is a great idea.

Free Ocean Lesson Plans Middle & High School

Ocean Odyssey lesson plan

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is a non-profit set up to help preserve, protect and restore the world’s ocean.

You will find:

  • Free Ocean unit lesson plans mostly aimed at middle and high school students covering coral reefs and mangroves, including virtual reality field trips
  • Ocean Odyssey takes viewers on an underwater journey from the Great Barrier Reef to Antarctica, following a whale mother and calf on their 1,500-mile migration. It incudes lessons for elementary (grades 2-5) with topics about humpback whales and ocean creatures.

FREE PDF Middle School Ocean Lesson Plans

Ocean creatures food web
  • Middle school lesson plans with cards like the one above to cut out and stick on teaching ocean food webs and food chains.
free download

 Get your free Ocean Odyssey PDF download here.

Fantastic Ocean Facts

This wonderful animation helps bring your homeschool Unit Studies alive with fascinating ocean facts:

  • The oceans harbor 99% of all living space on Earth
  • The oceans have enough water to fill a bathtub that is 685 miles long on each side
  • Scientists think there are 1,000s of undiscovered species living in the deep

Enjoy!

Layers Of The Ocean In A Jar

Layers of the ocean experiment

"My son wants to be a marine biologist, so we have been studying the ocean since he could talk.

My favorite activity was making an ocean layer model in a jar."

~ Wendy, Courageous Homeschooling Facebook group

See The Creatures Of The Deep

This lovely interactive page let's you scroll down to see all the creatures in the Ocean.

"Wow! This is so amazing. Thanks for sharing!"

~ Lisa, Courageous Homeschooling Facebook group

Octonauts

Octonauts

Great fun and learning at Octonauts corner.

You can also watch Octonauts on the BBC.

"Although Octonauts is aimed at preschool/ infant aged children we found the knowledge involved in the program was far above this and we found as adults we were learning things.

There are games on there too and coloring pages too."

~ Sheila

Help Save Ocean Creatures

If you want a fantastic way to inspire your kids to start this homeschooling unit study, watch this true home video of the rescue of a humpback whale from fishing nets. It's so amazing; the whale even comes back to say thanks!

Art And Craft

seahorse

Kids love drawing! What a shame so many of them get put off by school…

  • Ocean Creatures stencils are fun.
  • How to Draw Sharks and other Sea Creatures helped us with outline shapes.
  • You can get stamps of ocean creatures to use with ink stamp pads and leave impressions of killer whales, dolphins and seals all over the place!
  • Pasta shapes, red lentils and kidney beans make an unusual free shark collage.
ocean activities for kids
scuba diver
  • And here's how to make an origami sting ray:
  • Watching David Attenborough's The Blue Planet got us fascinated with ocean creatures like Anglerfish and how they attract their prey.
ocean creatures craft

Set Up An Aquarium

Setting up an aquarium can be a huge excitement - and a great addition to your homeschool Unit Studies.

enjoy your own aquarium

"Our new fish tank minus the fish.  My kids have already named their new pets even though we don't have them yet haha." ~ Mandy

discus fish

If you are thinking of doing the same, Simone can help you make sure you don't make a mistake I wouldn't have thought of:

"Such a fun hobby (and quite addictive!)...I would recommend watching some videos on YouTube about the cycling process. It can take weeks to build up the beneficial bacteria.

You can cheat by using some used filter media from an established aquarium (if you know a friend who has a tank?) or even adding a bacteria starter which you can buy from the pet store...I learned the hard way and nearly lost all my fish yikes!" ~ Simone

Virtual Oceans

Whale bone laboratory at the Smithsonian

I couldn't resist adding some virtual exhibits!  Here are:

  • The whale bones exhibit from the Smithsonian...click on the arrows and it's like you are seeing round the lab. Exciting!
  • Virtual tours of lots more exhibits including marine ecosystems at the Smithsonian - some way beyond the scope of this Unit to tempt you!

Science Experiments

What an ideal way to add water into the equation and learn all sorts of free homeschooling science!

  • You can fill your bath full of ocean creatures and play the game: Does it float or does it sink? ("Properties of materials" for those who do teacher-speak homeschool unit studies).
ocean creatures bath toy
  • If you squeeze the bubbles out of a sponge, you'll be able to work out why 'floaters' sink too.
  • You can make metal ships out of tin foil, divide the inside into cargo holds with bits of cardboard and work out how load effects which end sinks first. (Physics for free as part of homeschool unit studies.)

Field Trips

This is a must activity to get the most out of your homeschooling unit studies.

  • The London Aquarium left us with memories of glass catfish, a sleeping leopard shark and feeding manta rays.
  • We met Bruce, the black-tipped reef shark, on a homeschooling trip to a Sea Life Sanctuary.
Monterey Bay live web cams of the sea
  • Monterey Bay Aquarium in California may be a little far away for some of us, but since it has live web cams of sea creatures including sea otters it's a great way to have a peek in the deep for free!

Ocean Crafts

If you've got a child who likes making models, you've got an ideal way of adding design and technology to your ocean creatures homeschooling unit studies.

  • We used K-Nex to make a 94cm shark.
  • We made a free homeschooling submersible out of a cereal packet body with cardboard egg box lights and a vegetable net fish-catcher.

More Homeschool Unit Studies

Try out some more brilliant free unit studies with this Homeschool Science: Rainforest for Kids Activities.

rainforest animals resource pack

And come and join in with our human body activities here.

make an eyeball for human body activities

So I hope you can see that ocean creatures make an ideal free homeschool unit studies project, with your child learning all sorts of things and having fun at the same time.



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