An A to Z of enhancements: U is for Under the Sea

Learning about life under the sea can open opportunities for children to consider that there are different habitats and ecosystems in the world. Children can be taught new vocabulary and facts linked to sea creatures, which can be embedded further when they play with enhancements.

IN WATER

The water tray is the most obvious choice for under-the-sea enhancements. Small-world sea creatures are a valuable addition to the water area continuous provision.

Setting up an attractive sealife tray enhancement can add interest and encourage talk. Loose parts can join the sea creatures in the water, such as a variety of shells and clusters of rocks that can be arranged into caves and platforms. Real seaweed or long grass to look like reeds can be an intriguing addition.

Magnifying glasses and sheets, as well as small mirrors, can be added. Through this the children can often be seen ‘using all their senses in hands-on exploration of natural materials’ (Development Matters).

ROLE PLAY

Our home corner has a display board that we made into a window. Several times throughout the year, the scene in the window changes to add a talking point for play in the house. During the children’s heightened interest in sea creatures, we asked them to help us turn the home corner into a magical submarine home.

They painted the backing paper blue and used their developing scissor control to cut out a selection of photos of sea creatures and plants. We stuck them on together and added some props to inspire imaginative play, such as sea-themed note pads, a basket of both fiction and non-fiction books linked to the theme, sea creature soft toys, and periscopes.

PICTURE BOOKS

There are many books that are set under the sea, and linking enhancements to them can bring the stories and facts to life. We looked carefully at the features of the ocean habitats depicted in the illustrations of books such as:

• Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae
• Tiddler by Julia Donaldson
• The Big Book of the Blue by Yuval Zommer.

The children were interested in the coral reefs they saw in the books. We set up an activity during a parent ‘Stay and Play’ session where they could make a coral reef together, with illustrations or real photographs as inspiration, different shaped pasta in various bright colours, paper bowls and sand-coloured playdough for the base.

For the rest of the week, we had an enhancement table with the same materials out. Some children chose to make a coral reef without adult support this time, but a small group decided to put the coloured pasta in some of the paper bowls and took them to the under-the-sea-themed home corner as food for the cuddly sea creature pets!

ECO-THEMES

One of our nursery children’s favourite books is Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. This book has lots of valuable talking points and PSED links, such as how you can be a good friend and how you could make up if you have a falling out. The illustrations use a beautiful palette of bright colours, and raised glitter decorates each tactile page. The importance of keeping our beaches and oceans clean comes up when the characters try to use some pieces of rubbish as their home.

Adding rubbish to a sealife tray can encourage children to think and talk about the effects this can have on sea creatures, as mentioned in ‘E is for Environmental Awareness’ (Nursery World, January 2023).

Through the story the children learnt about rock pools and facts about hermit crabs. I set up two tuff trays with glittery fabric in them, to mirror the illustrations. The blue fabric tray was set up as a rock pool with large rocks all around the outside. Some of our sealife toys were put inside, including a big crab. During ‘Together Time’, the children were told that the crab and other creatures need a new home to shelter them from predators, just like in the story.

In the second tray were various materials, and the children set to work to create homes and shelters for the sea creatures. They talked about what they were doing. ‘I am going to make the hermit crab a new shell so the seagull doesn’t get him,’ one girl enthusiastically said to another as she selected the materials that she felt would make an excellent new shell.