Keeping the Ocean Clean Activities

What You Need:

Dish drying board
Water table or large tub
Watering cane
Recyclables (plastic bottles, bottle caps, cans, paper, etc.)
Chart paper
Black marker
Poster board or butcher paper
Poster and/or mural materials (paint, crayons, construction paper, scissors, glue, etc.)

What you do:

Lead a discussion about how important it is to keep the ocean clean and free of trash. Ask: “Why do you think it’s important to keep the ocean clean?” Write responses on chart paper. For example,

• to help the ocean animals stay healthy
• to keep materials in trash out of the food supply
• to keep water safe for swimming
• to keep ocean animal homes healthy

Explain that even trash that is thrown on the ground far from the ocean can end up polluting it. This is because streams, both above ground and underground, eventually empty into the ocean. When it rains, streams of water flow down streets and sewers and collect trash. Eventually, the streams carry the trash into the ocean, where it pollutes the water with chemicals or causes problems for animals.

Indoors
Place a dish drying board by your water table. Add plastic fish to the water table. Add paper, cups, and other recycled items on the drying board. Use a watering cane to add water across the drying board surface as if it where raining and until the water will carry the trash with it down in the water table and cover the fish. Let children discuss what will happen to the fish and the water.

Outdoors
Illustrate this process with a simple experiment. Let children place items taken from a recycling bin along a slanted driveway or ramp. Spray a hose across the surface as if it were raining. Children will see how the water running downstream will lift and carry the trash with it, forming a pool/puddle of water full with trash at the bottom. When the experiment is over, have children collect recyclables from the puddle and return them to the recycling bin.

Help children form a conclusion, based on their observations, about what they can do to help keep the ocean clean: Throw trash away responsibly, either in trash cans or recycling bins. Let children work together to make a poster or bulletin board mural that reminds people that throwing trash away responsibly is an important part of caring for the ocean and the animals that live in it. Let them brainstorm a title for their creation and decide what kind of design they’d like to work on. Children can paint the scene and/or cut out construction paper to make different objects and animals to arrange in the scene.