Brilliant Bundles: Crab Crafts and Activities for an Ocean Theme

The first ocean creature I brought out for or ocean theme month was the crab. For the month we have learned about the fiddler crab, king crab, ghost crab and spider crab and we have done so many fun activities and crafts, I thought id share! (For getting started on an ocean theme lesson visit Getting Started)

Toilet Paper Roll Crab

What's better than to use something you always have around the house? Don't throw away those empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls! They can be turned into anything... like this cute crab!

What you will need:

TP roll

Pipe cleaners

Paint (we used watercolors)

White glue

Googly eyes

Let your child paint the TP roll and then set aside to dry. When dry, use a hole punch on the ends of the roll so you can thread the pipe cleaners through to make his legs. Make 2 holes in the front for the claws and form some pipe cleaners into little loops and thread them through. Last, glue on some googly eyes! Very simple and your child will love it!

Sandpaper Crabs

What you will need:

Sandpaper

Crayons

Sheet of white paper

Iron

Glue

Googly eyes

Make a few crab shaped cutouts from the sandpaper to give to your child to color. Encourage them to press hard with the crayons and cover as much of the sandpaper as possible. When they are finished coloring, lay the sandpaper crabs crayon side down on a piece of white paper and iron (without steam) for a couple minutes making sure not to burn the paper. Lift the cutouts and voila! It will look like you've used stamps on the paper. Your child can then glue on some eyes for decoration if they like :)

Handprint Crab

What you will need:

Blue and white construction paper

White glue

Googly eyes

Red paint (we used tempra)

Tissue paper

Scissors

Cut up your desired colors of tissue paper into small chunks. (We used light blue and purple)

Next, lay out a sheet of blue construction paper and cover the surface (or let your kids) with a glue stick and let them stick the pieces of tissue paper on. Set aside to dry. Lay out a piece of white construction paper, and paint your child's hand with the paint and let them stamp it. Do the same with the other hand and have them stamp it again on the opposite side so it looks like the crab. You can then glue on some googly eyes on the thumbs. After the crab is dry, cut around it and paste it on to the ocean collage they made! So cute and "hands on" :P

Crab Counting and Matching

What you will need: (makes 20 crabs)

10 different colored and or patterned scrap booking papers

Crab template

Numbers

scissors

contact paper

Hot glue

googly eyes (if you haven't noticed, we really love using googly eyes!)

First, cut out the crab from the free printout. Next, fold your first piece of scrap booking paper in half so that the white of the paper is showing and the pattern/color is on the inside. Take a pencil and trace a crab on the paper using the template. Fold your other colored papers the same way and put two more under the first and cut out the crab. This will limit the amount of cutting by giving you 6 crabs with one cut. Repeat until you used all your paper and have 10 pairs of crabs. Cut out all the numbers from the printout above and tack one to each crab. For lasting use, laminate them with contact paper and use a hot glue gun to glue on the eyes! You can make so many games out of these!

Educational Crab Activities

I made this crab info sheet using red construction paper and then laminated it with contact paper so we could keep it around for learning purposes and word recognition. I've made a much cuter one that you can print by visiting Crab Info Sheet. I would suggest printing it on card stock and then laminating it.

Show the info sheet to your child and then ask them questions about what you've just read. ex- "How many claws does a crab have?"

Another activity I like to do with Lucy is to have her pretend to be a crab. I ask her to show me how a crab walks, and how a crab eats. I lay out her morning snack and ask her to eat her snack like a crab and she pretends she has pinchers to eat it with :)

Recommended books:

Crabs / Rake, Jody Sullivan

Beach combing : exploring the seashore / Arnosky, Jim

Crab Songs

We're Little Orange Crabs

Sung to: "The Farmer in the Dell"

We're little orange crabs
Who live down by the sea,
And where we do go
We're quick as quick can be.

We're little orange crabs
Who like to run and hide,
And when you see us walking by
It's always side to side.

Five Cranky Crabs

Five cranky crabs were digging on the shore.

One swam into a net and then there were four.

Four cranky crabs were floating in the sea.

One got tangled up in seaweed then there were three.

Three Cranky crabs were wondering what to do.

One dug a deep, deep hole. Then there were two.

Two cranky crabs were warming in the sun.

One got scooped up in a cup. Then there was one.

One cranky crab was smarter than his friends.

He hid between the jagged rocks.

That's how the story ends.