our coral reef...

Yesterday the kids had the itch to play with their craft supplies... so after quiet time I gave in and told then that they could get out whatever craft supplies they wanted as long as they used them to make a coral reef. So, after I found them a cardboard box, they set to work making a coral reef!

Here's Alex's sea urchin....
(needless to say... we have no toothpicks left in our house now that are not part of a sea creature)

Here is a shot of the reef...
and the floor of the reef...
I walked away from this one and let them do it completely on their own. They had access to a stack of library books, and the internet. They did plenty of goofing around but honestly, they worked really hard on this project. They worked on it from around 2:00pm until dinner at 6:00. They sat and read the books together or would get lost for 20 or more minutes at a time on websites with gorgeous color photos of coral and the creatures that live on the reefs.

The scuba divers came from the Crayola site and you can find them here (link to the pdf file). The odd lumpy things on the floor of the reef are sea shells... they worked on those forever. There is a manta ray swimming with the divers in there too.

It was a lot of fun! They're still thinking about what they can add to it, so apparently this is a work in progress.

Thank you all so much for the reading list suggestions!!! I'm definitely going to check them all out! My plan is to compile all of the suggestions into a post here in a day or two! Thanks again!