Ocean Unit Study Language Arts: Message in a Bottle

I am pulling out all the stops today or is that corks? Ha ha corny I know.  But I have set aside a few things for Tiny in doing our ocean unit study for language arts and one of them is preparing a message in a bottle.

Too, I want to be sure I use up some of the “treasures” I keep in what I call my “Mary Poppins Bag”.  They are usually games, fun hands-on items, books or some other manipulative that I buy or collect, keep in my “reserve” or stash and don’t let the boys know about.  Then I bring them out to add a twist to our day, ramp up a lesson plan or to use with a unit study.

In this case, I wanted to give Tiny a writing assignment outside of the box and well inside the bottle and I can’t think of anything more fun than writing a message in a bottle.  So we used this message in a bottle kit I had purchased.

I probably could have found a bottle around here, made some cool map and writing page, but I had this nifty little purchase already in my house.  Keeping hands-on activities easy for me him, why not use up what I have already.

Since my house is emptying out nicely, craft items are getting harder to find too.  But I knew that and I planned ahead a bit by stocking up my “Mary Poppins Bag”.

Actually this kit had a cool ocean current map so he can predict where his bottle may go.  He made some predictions from where we will be dropping it off.  It also came with a box or container so he can store his bottle in the container until we get ready to fly out of here.

Since we will be flying out of Florida when we move, we can drop it in the ocean there. That’s the plan anyway.

I can tell you this morning he is not having any trouble composing his first draft.  Ideas are overflowing.  Give kids a purpose to write, include a few hands-on items and they’ll be inspired to communicate.

Hugs and love ya,

Also See: Oceans Unit Study