Games

Flying Fish

Select a large cardboard box. Paint the box blue to resemble the ocean. Collect unwanted spare unmatched socks.  Use marker pens to decorate the socks so that they look like fish.  Use sand or rice to partially fill the sock and secure the end with an elastic band. Take turns to throw the flying fish into the box.

Fishy Facts: Deep Ocean Fish

Many deep ocean fish have specially adapted to live in extremely high pressure, low light conditions. Viper fish (Mesopelagic - found at 80-1600 meters - about a mile down) are some of the most wicked looking fish dredged up from the depths. Some are black with light organs (called photophores) in strategic places on their bodies, including one on a long dorsal fin that serves as a lure for the fish it preys upon. The light organs create lights by using a chemical process called bioluminescence.  Bioluminescence is light produced by a chemical reaction within an organism. Some viperfish (and many other deep ocean fish species) don't have any pigment (colour) at all - they're completely transparent. They also have enlarged eyes, presumably for gathering as much light as possible where there is little or no light at all.

Other deep ocean fish, such as the gulper eel have a hinged skull, which can rotate upward to swallow large prey.

Fishy Facts: The Shark

Sharks have been on our planet for over 400 million years - 200 million years older than land dinosaurs! Fossils of shark's teeth can be found on land where the sea used to be. Scientists can tell the age of the rock and therefore find out the date of the teeth. Sharks shed their teeth many times during their lifetime.

There are over 300 species of shark. Sharks belong to a class of fish called Chondrichthyes, which means their skeletons are made of cartilage rather than bones. Manta rays, skates, guitarfish and sawfish are close cousins of sharks because they too have cartilaginous skeletons. Swimming from side to side, sharks have amazing flexibility and accuracy in their movements. These abilities make them excellent hunters and smaller sharks can out manoeuvre their prey with ease. They also have different shaped heads and tails depending on their lifestyle.

Sharks find their way around the oceans using 6 senses instead of just 5. They can hear, smell, speak, feel and see but they can also sense electric vibrations made by other animals as they move through the water. They have an amazing sense of direction which scientists believe is due to their abilities to detect magnetic forces, just like a compass!

Types of shark

The most well known shark is the white shark Carcharodon Carcharias. It is most common on the Atlantic coast of the United States. It is a fast swimmer, with large pectoral fins and a nearly symmetrical tail fin. It is white underneath but has a grey back with dark-tipped fins and a conspicuous black spot behind the pectorals. It reaches a length of over 6 m and a weight of over 3,180 kg. It feeds on large fish and other animals; a 100-lb (45-kg) sea lion was recovered from the stomach of one specimen. The white shark's serrated, triangular teeth were used as arrowheads by Native Americans of the Florida coast.

The biggest shark is the Whale Shark. This shark earned its name not just for its stunning size—it can grow 50 feet long—but because its dark body is sprinkled with white spots, like certain whales. The whale shark is the largest fish in the sea. But it's a gentle giant. Its teeth are no bigger than human baby teeth, and it eats only small fish and plankton.

The strangest looking shark is the hammerhead. Its head is wide and flat, for lift that may aid swimming, with eyes at each end for keen vision. The nostrils are widely spaced which is very good for odour detection. It may also use its odd-shaped head to hold down its prey. An excellent predator, the hammerhead will eat almost anything—fish, squid, even other hammerheads! The average hammerhead is about 12 feet long.

The smallest shark is the Dwarf Dogshark (Etmopterus perryi) Discovered in 1985, the Dwarf Dogshark is believed to grow to no more than six to seven inches long. It is known as the dogshark because it lives and hunts in packs, like wild dogs do.

A Tasseled Wobbegong has a stunning variety of spots, bands, and other markings that help it hide among the coral reefs it calls home. But most striking is the shaggy-looking fringe of skin that flaps all around its broad mouth. The Tasseled Wobbie is of a type known as the "Carpet Shark" because of its low, flat shape. It grows to about eight feet long.

Where plankton is thick in the water, the 40-foot-long Basking Shark swims along with its giant mouth held wide open. It usually travels in groups and may rest on the ocean floor when not on a quest for plankton. Basking sharks are slow movers in a number of ways—pregnancy for this kind of shark is thought to last for three and a half years.

With its flat, fluttery body, the Angel Shark looks like a giant ray. It hides in the sand of the ocean floor, with little more than its eyes exposed. Mottled markings offer good camouflage. The Angel Shark doesn't swim very fast; mostly, it lies around waiting for even slower-moving prey to swim by. An Angel Shark grows to five or six feet long.

Fishy Facts: The Lobster

Lobsters are animals that have a tough shell and live on the ocean floor. Lobsters are invertebrates, animals without a backbone. Lobsters are cold-blooded; their body temperature depends on the temperature of the water. This crustacean has a hard exoskeleton, 4 pairs of jointed walking legs, a segmented body, sensory antennae, a tail fan, and compound eyes on stalks. Lobsters are carnivores (meat-eaters). Most lobsters are nocturnal (most active at night). They are predators that eat crabs, clams, worms, snails, mussels, flounder, and other lobsters.

The lobster begins its life as a tiny, floating organism, which is a component of plankton. After a month of growing, it sinks to the sea floor, where it will spend most of its time hiding from predators. As a lobster grows, it often moults (loses its old shell and grows a new one). It eats the old shell. Lobsters continue to grow throughout their lives. The biggest lobster caught weighed over 44 pounds (20 kg). Lobsters may live to be 100 years old.

Fishy Facts: The Starfish

• Starfish feet work by hydraulic pressure and can prise apart shellfish such as mussels.
• It inserts its stomach into prey and dissolves the tissue.
• Severed arms may be capable of becoming new individuals.
• Fishermen used to cut starfish in half to kill them but were in fact increasing the population.

Fishy Facts: The Mermaid

Sailors throughout history often thought they were seeing mermaids when they were really seeing Manatees or their relatives. "Sirenia", the order to which Manatees and Dugongs belong, comes from the word "siren". In ancient mythology, this was a term used for sea-nymphs who lured sailors and their ships to treacherous rocks and shipwreck with their mesmerizing songs. With a little imagination, Manatees can have an uncanny resemblance to human form that could only increase after long months at sea. The manatee probably helped perpetuate the myth of the existence of these "half-human" creatures.

Fishy Facts: The Giant Squid

The Giant Squid (Architeuthis) is an invertebrate (animal without a backbone). It swims the oceans at great depths. No one has ever seen a living Giant Squid. Only dead examples have been found.

These soft-bodied cephalopods are fast-moving carnivores that catch prey with their tentacles, then poison it with a bite from beak-like jaws. They move by squirting water from the mantle through the siphon, a type of jet propulsion. The Giant Squid's only enemy is the sperm whale, who hunts it deep in the ocean.

The largest-known Architeuthis was 57 feet (17.5 m) long. They have eight arms, two longer feeding tentacles, a beak, a large head, and two eyes, each the size of a basketball. They breathe using gills.

Giant squid are fast-moving carnivores (meat-eaters) that catch prey (probably large marine creatures) with their two feeding tentacles, then hold the prey with the eight arms and bite it into small pieces using a parrot-like beak. Their oesophagus runs through the brain, so the food must be in small pieces before swallowing.

Party Games with a submarine twist!

Pin the tail on the Shark

Pretty much like pin the tail on the donkey…but with a shark – you could use our big cut out shark and some sticky Blue or White Tack

Click here to download a pdf A4 single sheet shark

Click here to download a pdf A2 four A4 shark

Flap the Kipper

An old fishy favourite, cut two biggish kipper shapes (about 30cm long) out of single sheets of news paper and arrange the kids into two evenly matched teams.

Give each team a whole newspaper each. They must then, one at a time flap the kipper (by slamming the newspaper down behind the 'kipper' and wafting it along the floor) and over a string line. The next team member has to flap the 'kipper back towards the team over the team line, and so on til all the team have had a go!

Underwater Swimming

Give a pair of flippers and a glass of water to each team. The first player stands at the start-line, puts on the flippers, takes the glass of water and lifts it above their head. So he/she is "under the water". At the signal the players begin to move forwards. On having covered the fixed distance the first "submariner" passes the flippers and the glass to the next player. If the water spilled from the glass after the first run, add some more water. Or you could make the team with the least water spilt the winner!

From:
http://party-games.zaural.ru/party-games-3.html

Diving

Definitely an outdoor game this!

2 teams take part in this game. For each team there must be a basin with water. The players jump into the basin so as to splash as much water as possible. The players jump into the basin in turn. The team which has the least water in the basin - wins.

From:
http://party-games.zaural.ru/party-games-16.html

Sharks & Lifeguards (thanks to Bill Reilly for this game)

You need a parachute(ear plugs could be helpful!!)

Everyone sits around the parachute edge with their feet and legs under the parachute (shoes removed) Depending on numbers, two girls are sharks and go under the parachute and two girls are life guards and stand. The object of the game is for the sharks to pull the sitting girls under the parachute and for the life guard "on hearing the cries for help" to try and prevent this by saving the girls. The game ends when all the girls have been pulled under by the sharks then two new life guard and sharks are chosen, the more playing the better the game, it goes down a treat with the Guides.

Party Music

here's a few ideas to start you off….

(So Nice to Be Beside) the Seaside – an oldie but a goodie!

The sound track to Little Mermaid.

Splish Splash – Bobby Darin

La Mer – Charles Trenet

Beyond the Sea – Charles Trenet

We all Live in a Yellow Submarine - The Beatles

Party Bags

Save your plastic netting bags from supermarket fruit for a few weeks and use these to put your end of party goodies in. You could even let the kids 'trawl' for 5 goodies from a bowl (an empty fish bowl perhaps!). You could have shell shaped chocolates, gummy fish and other under the sea gummy creatures, plus little plastic toy fish, submarines, octopi and sharks – and they can see what they can net!