20+ Ocean Printables for Preschoolers
Ocean printables for preschoolers can bring a splash of fun into your classroom while still supporting key early learning skills. With playful sea creature activities and easy-to-use worksheets, this theme helps keep kids engaged during the busier, warmer months. It’s also a great way to introduce new preschool theme ideas that combine structure with plenty of movement and discovery.
Whether it’s counting clams or tracing waves, ocean-themed printables offer just enough novelty to make familiar skills feel fresh again. And since everything ties into one theme, transitions become smoother and your day flows with a little more ease.

Ocean printables for preschoolers have a way of turning an ordinary lesson into something that feels more like playtime. One minute you’re practicing counting, the next you’re helping a crab find its way through a maze or matching seashells by size and color.
It’s all the learning you want to see, with all the fun your preschoolers look forward to. Themed printables work especially well during the summer months, when attention spans are shorter and kids are daydreaming about the beach.
If you’ve been wanting to mix things up, now’s a great time to explore fresh preschool activity ideas. An ocean theme blends easily into just about any part of the day—from circle time songs about fish to literacy games with bubble letters. And because ocean animals are familiar but still full of wonder, they keep little minds curious and engaged.
Read this: Ocean Art for Preschoolers
Shop our Ocean Printables for Preschool
Make a splash in preschool learning with our engaging and educational ocean printable activities for preschoolers.
Free Ocean Printables for Preschoolers
These ocean themed math printables will be a fun addition to your ocean themed preschool lesson plans. With these free printables kids will practice counting, number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, addition, subtraction, writing numbers, and fine motor skills.
This "Five Little Fishies" song and counting printable is perfect for math time, and it's a great activity for teaching counting. Combine this with the song, and your preschoolers are sure to love learning!
Looking for a fun and educational way to keep your preschooler engaged this summer? Try our Summer Pattern Block Printable Mats! These bright, themed mats are designed to make early math learning both enjoyable and hands-on.
They’re a fantastic way to blend math and literacy into your summer routine. Whether you’re teaching at home or in the classroom, these printable mats are a must-have for your preschool summer math activities!
As the sun-filled days of summer roll in, parents and educators are often on the lookout for fun, educational ways to keep little learners engaged. These beach-themed prewriting cards are a great way to support early writing skills with a splash of seaside fun!
Perfect for tracing practice or strengthening fine motor skills, these cards add an adorable beachy twist to prewriting routines. So let’s dive into a sea of preschool beach activities—because these prewriting cards offer more than one way to play and learn!
Get ready for some fun in the sun! If you’re looking for creative ways to engage your preschoolers while exploring the beach and ocean life, you’re in the right place. These free beach-themed lesson plans for preschoolers are designed to celebrate the wonders of nature and the excitement of ocean adventures.
Whether you live near the coast or miles away, preschoolers are naturally drawn to sand, water, and all the fascinating creatures that call the sea home.
Number recognition and counting are key building blocks in a preschooler’s early math development. During an under the sea theme, we love incorporating a variety of ocean-themed math activities to keep things fun and engaging! And let’s be honest—what preschooler doesn’t love ocean animals?
To help young learners build their math skills, it’s important to offer plenty of hands-on practice. These ocean-themed counting mats are perfect for reinforcing counting, number recognition, and one-to-one correspondence.
Ahoy, matey! A pirate theme is a favorite among preschoolers (and let’s be honest—grown-ups too!). With treasure hunts, pirate ships, and maps to explore, these free pirate-themed preschool lesson plans have everything you need for an adventure-filled learning experience.
Best of all, these FREE lesson plans make planning your pirate theme both fun and stress-free—no walking the plank required! Keep reading to discover all the swashbuckling pirate activities and grab your free download at the end of this post.
Sun, salt, and sand—it’s that time of year when everything ocean-themed is calling our name! These free ocean-themed lesson plans for preschoolers are packed with fun and educational ways to bring the sea to your classroom.
Inside, you’ll discover over 16 engaging ideas for your ocean preschool theme, including book recommendations, art projects, sensory play, literacy activities, and hands-on math and science fun. Best of all, everything is organized into a clean, easy-to-use printable lesson plan—ready for you to download for FREE at the end of this post!
There’s just something magical about the tropics that captures everyone’s imagination—so why not bring that tropical vibe into your preschool this summer? These printable learning games for preschoolers are a fun and engaging way to explore iconic tropical themes while building key early learning skills.
Exploring seashells is an essential part of any ocean-themed preschool unit. Even better? You can easily incorporate early literacy skills into the fun. Seashell matching makes for an excellent pre-reading activity, and this post includes a FREE printable to get you started.
Use the matching cards in your preschool literacy or science center, or tuck them into a zip-top bag for a quiet-time busy bag.
These free printable ocean counting grids are a fun way to learn counting, and they come with three different grids: 10, 20, and 100. They're also an excellent way to teach one-to-one correspondence, addition, and subtraction.
Roll and Say alphabet games are simple to prep and full of fun for little learners! These easy-to-use game mats offer a playful way to practice a variety of early phonics skills.
This Roll and Say Summer ABC game is a perfect fit for end-of-year activities, summer learning at home, or preschool summer camps. It also pairs perfectly with beach, shell, or ocean-themed units for both preschoolers and kindergarteners!
Help your preschoolers learn to count with this free ocean "I Spy" counting printable! This is such a simple activity, and it doubles as a fun way to introduce kids to new words like whale, crab, puffer fish, seahorse, and more.
Learning about ocean animals is always a hit—especially as summer approaches and thoughts of the beach start to surface! We've been having so much fun exploring the names of our favorite sea creatures, so I decided to bring that excitement into our learning centers with these free Ocean Animal Beginning Sound Clip Cards.
They're a great way to combine ocean-themed fun with early literacy practice!
This octopus-themed alphabet game is a fun and effective way to combine letter recognition with fine motor practice—giving kids double the learning benefits while they play! It’s ideal for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and makes a fantastic addition to your ocean-themed lesson plans.
If you’re on the hunt for a playful and educational ocean alphabet activity, this one is just what you need!
This hungry shark printable mat is a fun way to teach subtraction with an ocean theme. This activity works well with students on all different learning levels.
You’re going to love this first set of printable clip cards—I put them together after seeing how much fun the kids had with them today! We’re currently exploring an ocean theme, so this set is filled with adorable sea animals like a whale, turtle, seahorse, starfish, and more.
These fish bubble counting mats are a perfect way to teach one-to-one correspondence. This free printable includes numbers 1-20 and comes with two different printing options.
Finding seashells at the beach is one of the best parts of summer break, isn’t it? There’s just something magical about the ocean—and discovering unique seashells makes it even better! Just like beachcombing, seashell-themed learning activities are always a hit with preschoolers.
That’s why you’ll love these Seashell Pre-Writing Number Tracing Cards. They’re perfect for helping your little ones practice number formation, number recognition, and fine motor skills—all in a fun, beachy way.
These free ocean count and trace cards are the perfect math activity for preschoolers. In addition to learning how to count, this activity is also great for fine motor skills, number recognition, and tracing.
These super cute ocean counting mats are an inviting way to practice counting and number recognition. This activity calls for the use of beads, but the printable pack also includes a sheet of ocean animals that you can cut out and use as manipulatives in place of the beads.
If you're looking for a fun ocean themed math activity for your math centers, check out these free ocean addition and subtraction mats! These mats are a bit more advanced but can be easily customized for each of your learners.
Get ready for some ocean-themed fun with these super cute Ocean Letter Tracing Sheets—perfect for preschoolers and toddlers. You’ll get two sets of 8 free tracing pages, each one featuring a different underwater creature: seahorse, crab, turtle, octopus, whale, fish, starfish, and dolphin!
You can use these sheets to practice both uppercase and lowercase letters. Stick with simple tracing or turn it into an art project by combining the sheets with a DIY Sharpie watercolor activity—perfect for a creative Preschool-K ocean unit!
Read this: Ocean Sensory Table: Small World Play
Get the Right Ocean Themed Manipulatives
Bringing the ocean to your classroom means having the right ocean materials. Here’s what I always have for my ocean theme.
- Set of 72 colorful counters in 6 different shapes and colors
- Reinforce counting, sorting, patterning, and other early math skill
- Includes whale, shark, sea lion, octopus, stingray, and sea turtle
- Animals Figurines: 12 Pcs Vibrant Colors Realistic Plastic Sea Animal, About 2-3 In.
- Great for Educational: This Montessori Animal Matching Game is Made for Kids to Help Prepare Them…
- Realistic Animals Details : Enhance Your Kid’s Imagination And Creativity While Teaching Through…
- Seaside Social-Emotional Learning: Kids identify and compare emotions through sensory play with…
- Build School-Ready Skills: This sorting toy’s pop-apart seashells help build memory and fine motor…
- Green Learning: Includes feelings poster and Activity Guide filled with kid-friendly sustainability…
- Strength Rubber
- 🦀Counting Ocean Animal Toys For Kids- Complete components includes 56 ocean animal(Crab, Lobster,…
- 🦞High Safety Factor- Ocean Animal toddler sensory toys are constructed of Strength Rubber,…
- SPARK INTEREST: Turn your child’s natural fascination about animals into curiosity about the…
- ENCOURAGE: Inspire imaginative play and vocabulary development. This jumbo ocean animal set is the…
- DURABLE FUN: Made of lightweight, durable, dishwasher-safe plastic
Ocean Themed Children’s Books
Carefully selected picture books about the ocean can really make your ocean theme come alive, especially if your preschool class doesn’t have any formal experience with the sea. Here are some of my favorite ocean theme picture books I like to read my class during circle time!
- Diesen, Deborah (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 08/06/2013 (Publication Date) – Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Publisher)
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Hardcover Book
- Hughes, Catherine D. (Author)
- Hardcover Book
- DK (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- Hardcover Book
- Keating, Jess (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- McDonald, Jill (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 26 Pages – 02/05/2019 (Publication Date) – Doubleday Books for Young Readers (Publisher)
- Guendelsberger, Erin (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 05/01/2020 (Publication Date) – Sourcebooks Wonderland (Publisher)
FAQs About Teaching an Ocean Theme
Teaching children about the ocean is a lot more than just playing with buckets of water and pretending to be pirates. Get them excited for math by teaching counting, time sequence skills, or shapes Teach literacy concepts through songs and fingerplays that feature ocean animals, and prewriting activities that feature beach toys.
But an ocean preschool theme doesn’t just have to be about sea animals. You can teach about the difference between fresh water and salt water, the different layers of the ocean, where in the world oceans are found, and about different jobs people might have related to the ocean.
Even if you don’t live near the ocean, picture books and videos about the ocean can make it come alive for preschoolers. You can also create fun, hands-on ocean activities such as sensory bins and water tables to add more enrichment to your lesson plans. And if you have the option, a field trip to an aquarium can open up a whole world of learning about ocean animals for kids.
A simple way to describe the ocean to preschoolers is to explain that it is a large body of salt water. You can use a globe, a map, pictures, books, and videos to visually show kids what an ocean looks like. To further explain what the ocean is, add a hands-on activity such as a sensory bin of salty, sandy water with ocean animal toys in it.

I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.