The Sign of the Seahorse by Graeme Base

In The Sign of the Seahorse, Graeme Base takes a break from land animals and journeys down into the sea.  It is written partially as a play with acts and scenes.  This is a great way to introduce a new type of literature. 

Some activities to do with this book:

1) Sequence the Scenes: Print out the scene titles and descriptions and ask the students to sequence them.  This activity is like the sequencing activity from Uno's Garden.  Have them sequence and then use transition words to retell.

Get your Scene Titles and Descriptions here!

2) Character Study: Describe each character (type of fish, personality, hero/villain, purpose in the story).  Use can use this information to compare and contrast different characters.

Get your Character Study sheet here!

3) Real Marine Life: Look up real fish that correlate with the characters.  Answer the following questions: What do they eat? How do they live? Where do they live?

4) Plays: Talk about what a play is, the different parts of a play, cast, scenes, etc.  Compare a true play to The Sign of the Seahorse.

5) Recipe: I use a take on dirt pie to create an ocean in a cup.  I like starting with all of my kids having individual clear cups to put their ingredients in instead of making one big "ocean" and then scooping it out to eat.  It doesn't really matter in the long run because they will end up with the same amount of food, I just like for each person to be able to do as much of the cooking as possible (and it is cleaner than a lot of scooping).

1) Smash up some vanilla wafers in a Ziploc bag and put them at the bottom of your cup to represent the sand.
2) Make blue jello per the package instructions and add it to each cup to represent the ocean.
3) Add jelly fish (I like Swedish Fish the best) to the jello.
4) Enjoy!!!

Get your Permission Slip here!