Using candy, students mimic the effects of advanced fishing methods on the population sizes of fish.
KELP
Kids Environmental Lesson Plans
KELP are free, downloadable marine science activities that encourage curiosity in kids and help them explore their surroundings. With simple materials and minimal preparation, these dynamic lesson plans address important ocean health issues including plastic pollution, overfishing and climate change.
KELP Activity Spotlight
Join the thousands of organizations and families across the globe who have inspired children to learn the importance of preserving healthy and abundant oceans through Sailors for the Sea Powered by Oceana's KELP program.
Ages 6 to 9
Catching Fish
A creative game that shows the effects of longline fishing on the health of the ocean ecosystem.
Contributed By:
Ages 9 and up
Catching Fish
A simple matching game for visually identifying fish and gaining an understanding of which can be sustainably harvested.
Contributed By:
All ages
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
A fun scavenger hunt that gives students understanding of what can be found on beaches, giving an introduction to beach ecology and the role of manmade objects.
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Ages 9 to 12
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Students create mini-coastal environments and introduce nutrients to see what happens in the estuaries where fresh and salt water meet.
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Students learn about the water cycle and the principles of filtering water by designing and building their own filters, then testing them with "dirty water."
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
A hands on activity that illustrates the different sources of sand including biological, geological and man-made.
Contributed By:
Ages 12 and up
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
This activity demonstrates Thermohaline Circulation throughout the world's oceans and the relative densities of cold and warm waters.
Contributed By:
Ages 12 and up
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Students create a simple scientific instrument and learn about the role of sediment in their local waters.
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Ages 12 and up
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
A fun board game designed to learn the three ways rocks can form.
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Ages 9 to 12
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Students create a watershed model using a plastic shower curtain, a spray bottle and themselves!
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Students construct a beach in a pan and investigate the effects of wind and waves on beach shape
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Ages 6 to 12
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Using materials and sand found on the beach, kids can create pieces of art
Contributed By:
Ages 6 to 12
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Learn about what is found in your coastal environment with this fun matching game.
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All Ages
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Kids will discover their natural surroundings by playing an interactive game of bingo with items that can be found at your beach or shoreline
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All Ages
Beaches, Bays & Rivers
Create a shoreline scavenger hunt utilizing local identification books for shells, seaweed, birds and other coastal things.
Contributed By:
All ages
Living Underwater
An activity that plays with light at different depths of the ocean and discusses adaptations organisms have made for different light conditions.
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Living Underwater
A hands on activity that illustrates how marine creatures have adapted to survive the extreme conditions between the rocky shoreline tide marks
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All ages
Living Underwater
A fun game teaching students how fish and other ocean creatures camouflage into their surroundings.
Contributed By:
Ages 6 to 9
Living Underwater
Students create a "blubber glove" to mimic the importance of blubber to whales living in frigid water.
Contributed By:
Ages 6 to 9
Living Underwater
An activity that demonstrates how baleen whales, such as Right Whales, use skim feeding to capture their prey.
Contributed By:
Ages 6 to 9
Living Underwater
Students build monoculars to view their surroundings from the prespectivie of a whale.
Contributed By:
Ages 9 and up
Living Underwater
In this fun matching game, kids will learn about the symbiotic relationship between different marine creatures.
Contributed By:
Ages 6 to 12
Living Underwater
Did you know that sharks have a sixth sense? Using magnets, kids can mimic how sharks use a unique sensory system to locate their prey.
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All Ages
Living Underwater
Discover one of the ways marine mammals are able to hold their breath for long dives underwater.
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All Ages
Living Underwater
With a slinky, discover how dolphins and whales use echolocation to navigate and find food.
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All ages
Pollution & Marine Debris
A game of freeze tag that gives an understanding of the interaction of oyster reefs and toxic waste (pollution) in the water.
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All ages
Pollution & Marine Debris
A tag inspired game that demonstrates how plastics and the chemicals in plastics are biomagnified to reach our dinner plates.
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All ages
Pollution & Marine Debris
Students illustrate the effects of the land use in a watershed by simulating development of their own riverfront property.
Contributed By:
Ages 12 and up
Pollution & Marine Debris
This activity uses an interactive narrative to illustrate the different sources of pollution, historic and modern, to a body of water.
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Pollution & Marine Debris
Students carry out a beach transect, learning about the prevalence and sources of plastic pollution in the oceans.
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Pollution & Marine Debris
In this simulation, students are challenged to find and remove a baking soda contaminant from a plastic shoebox filled with damp sand
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All ages
Pollution & Marine Debris
In this eye-opening activity, students discover how long it takes for different materials to degrade by putting items (i.e. orange peel, plastic straw) along a timeline.
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Aquatic Animals
Students learn about the variation of size and type of marine organisms in the local marine and freshwater environments by building dip and plankton nets.
Contributed By:
Ages 12 and up
Aquatic Animals
Students create a cutout model of a clam to investigate the anatomy and physiology of these animals.
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All ages
Aquatic Animals
Students will learn about the anatomy of coral and the unique symbiotic relationship between corals and zooxanthellae by building an edible coral polyp.
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All ages
Aquatic Animals
Students build a globe to demonstrate a mass coral spawning event.
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All ages
Aquatic Animals
Students create plankton with craft materials and race them in a large container of water. Slowest plankton wins!
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All ages
Aquatic Animals
Students will learn about the importance of oysters to estuarine ecosystems and to the community with live oysters.
Contributed By:
Ages 6 to 9
Aquatic Animals
Through a "musical chairs"-like game, learn about hermit crabs and the challenges they face when they need to find a new shell home
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Ages 6 to 12
Aquatic Animals
With just a simple rope, students can gain perspecitive on how big some of our ocean's largest animals are.
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All Ages
Aquatic Animals
Students will explore their outdoor surroundings to discover and learn about local flora and fauna.
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Ages 9 and up
Aquatic Animals
Students will mimic how boats can quickly spread invasive species to new bodies of water.
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All ages
Food Chains
A game of Jenga that demonstrates the marine food web and the impacts humans have on the food web.
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All ages
Food Chains
Students identify what kind of consumer their marine animal is by examining the prey items they find in a Jell-O filled "stomach".
Contributed By:
Ages 12 and up
Climate Change
An interactive game where students cycle as carbon between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem.
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Climate Change
Students figure out what season it is based on maps of sea surface temperature and phytoplankton growth.
Contributed By:
Ages 12 and up
Climate Change
Which type of ice causes a rise in sea level when it melts: formations on land, like glaciers, or formations in the water, like icebergs?
Contributed By:
Ages 9 to 12
Chemistry of the Sea
An interactive activity demonstrating the effects of ocean acidification on shelled marine organisms, the ocean food web and to humans.
Contributed By:
Ages 12 and up
Chemistry of the Sea
Students use thier own exhaled breath and a red cabbage pH indicator to visualize how our oceans are becoming more acidic.
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Ages 6 to 12
Chemistry of the Sea
Learn why the ocean is salty and why it's easier to float in seawater.
Contributed By:
All Ages
Ocean Fun Packs
Through word searches, matching and other fun games learn about these bustling cities of marine life and how to protect them.
All Ages
Ocean Fun Packs
Learn about our polar regions' unique habitat and wildlife through crossword puzzles, word searches and other fun activities.
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Great for sailing instructors, teachers & camp counselors!
Looking for supplemental reading material? Check out Ocean: Secrets of the Deep
