Ocean Math

Here are a few ocean math ideas to get you started with your ocean unit. I hope you like them!

Ocean Bottles

In this small group or partner activity, kids write and solve addition, subtraction or multiplication problems.

You will need: plastic pop bottles with the lids

Dice

Blue or green food coloring.

A sheet of paper for each pair or group of students.

You'll need to make enough ocean bottles so that each student or pair of students can have one.

To make an ocean bottle, simply slip one die into the bottle. Then fill the bottle up almost to the top with water. Add a few drops of blue or green food coloring... or mix blue and green to make an even more ocean-like color! You should be able to hold the bottle up at eye level and see the die at the bottom of the bottle.

How to play: Two students shake their bottles (or take turns shaking one bottle) and writing down the number they see. The two students then work together create an addition, subtraction or multiplication problem. You can either have the students solve their own problems, or switch papers with another partner group once everyone has finished recording their problems.

Ice Cube Tray BINGO (sort of)

In this game, kids can practice addition, number recognition, or multiplication.

You'll need: An ice cube tray for each student.

Two large dice OR cards with numbers written on them.

Small sea shells. (You could use any small object that would fit in an ice cube tray compartment, but since this was an activity for Ocean Week I used sea shells!)

To practice number recognition, take each ice cube tray and label the compartments from one, to however many compartments there are. If you do it this way, you should have number cards labeled with the same numbers. To practice addition, label the compartments from two to twelve. (You'll have one extra compartment for a "free space.")

How to play: Each student gets an ice cube tray and some sea shells.

To play for number recognition skills, the "caller" either holds up a number card, or says a number. The students must find that number in their ice cube tray, and put a shell in the correct compartment.

To play for addition skills, the "caller" rolls two large dice and shows the students what they land on. (Or you could have students take turns rolling the dice.) Students then add the two numbers together and put the shell in the correct compartment.

Students "win" the game by having a sea shell in each compartment. If you wrote the same numbers on all of the ice cube trays, the students will finish at the same time. To make things trickier, make all of the trays different, writing some numbers twice on the same tray and leaving out other numbers. If a student has two of the same number, and the caller calls that number, the student can only put a shell in one of the compartments. He has to wait for the number to come up again in order to put a shell in the other compartment.

This is pretty much a BINGO type of game, but the ice cube trays and sea shells make it more novel for the kids!

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