Home > Book Based Activities > Hole in the Bottom of the Sea Imaginative Water Table Play

Hole in the Bottom of the Sea Imaginative Water Table Play

Hello Rainy Day Mum readers! My name is Hayley and I write at Minne-Mama. I am a stay-at-home mom living in Minnesota with my husband and toddler and post about the crafts and activities we do at home (or more recently the fun things to do around Minnesota in the summer). I am so excited to be sharing one of our favorite books and a simple summery activity to go along with it!

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - bringing the book alive for young children through play part of the Story Book Summer on Rainy Day MumWe have included links to the products and books used in this activity. If you buy from these links we may earn a small commission.

We first found this fun version of A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea when we watched the song on Barefoot Books YouTube channel. There are a lot of fun song books on the publisher’s site, so for Skyler’s birthday last month I bought him some of our favorites. A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea is about the food chain of the water dwelling animals living in the sea. My favorite thing about this book is that it also comes with a CD/DVD with the video from their website, the same song on a CD, and a sing-along track with just the background music. We can spend almost half an hour just reading and singing this one book!

Another birthday gift for my baby boy was a water table. I wanted to combine these two gifts to make the activity for our story book summer. I made some simple foam animals to go along with the ones that can be found in the book. There is a shark, eel, squid, crab, snail, and a weed.

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Materials Needed:

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - bringing the book alive for young children through play part of the Story Book Summer on Rainy Day Mum

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea adapted by Jessica Law

Craft foam – I used grey, green, purple, red, yellow, and white

Pencil

Scissors

Glue – we recommend using a glue suitable for craft foam or a hot glue gun

Various colored markers (permanent)

A water table or bin

What to do:

To make the sea creatures for our water play activity

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - bringing the book alive for young children through play part of the Story Book Summer on Rainy Day Mum

I first drew out the shapes of the animals on a piece of paper (just by looking at the animals in the book).  They could be drawn straight onto the foam if you don’t want to do this extra step. After cutting out the animal shapes from the paper, I traced them onto the color foam that went along with each animal.

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - bringing the book alive for young children through play part of the Story Book Summer on Rainy Day Mum

Once the animals were cut out of the foam, I used sharpies to create the details. For the eyes, teeth on the shark, and stripes on the eel, I used white foam and glued them on. The squid took the most time, but all of the sea creatures were actually very simple to make just by looking at the pictures in the book and trying to use coordinating colors. It was a fun mama project!

Imaginative Play in the Water Table

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - bringing the book alive for young children through play part of the Story Book Summer on Rainy Day Mum

Once they were dry we were ready to play! I added some water to our table and added the six sea dwellers. Immediately Skyler stacked them up like the end of the book where he always says “the shark eat a burrito!” and then “Aww, they huggin’!”

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - bringing the book alive for young children through play part of the Story Book Summer on Rainy Day Mum

The book is showing the order of the food chain for the animals in the book, but I love Skyler’s hugging prediction! I also set the animals along the edge of the water table and he had fun putting them into the “hole” in the bottom of the sea.

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea - bringing the book alive for young children through play part of the Story Book Summer on Rainy Day Mum

Minne-Mama CoverIf you would like to follow along with Minne-Mama in the future, we can be found on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram!

Thank you again Rainy Day Mum for the wonderful opportunity!

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Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

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