Water Pollution Activities and Ocean Pollution for Kids

Trying to teach children about ocean pollution may sound like a difficult feat. You see, the ocean is a huge place, and it’s hard to imagine that the tiniest piece of litter could impact this enormous body of water. When it comes to teaching children about ocean pollution, your best bet is to start thinking about hands-on activities that will visually show how the smallest piece of liter can pollute a body of water. This water pollution activity is a great place to start.

Ocean Pollution for Kids

Water Pollution Activity and Ocean Pollution for Kids

Ocean Pollution Facts

There are some facts about ocean pollution that I bet you didn’t even know. Check out these ocean pollution facts and then move on towards some activity ideas that will help you teach children about the pollution in oceans and how it impacts ocean life as well as the experience of non-ocean life.

Fertilizer is the most severe ocean pollution. Homeowners and others use fertilizer on their lawns and gardens which then seeps into the local rivers. These local rivers eventually meet up with the ocean, carrying the pollutants from that fertilizer right into the sea.

The next most significant pollution in our ocean is oil spills. These occur from offshore oil wells, oil tankers, and pipelines that have an oil leak or massive accident. The oil seeps into the ocean and causes a lot of natural ocean wildlife to die.

Human debris is the third thing that causes a lot of ocean pollution. Everything from fishing hooks or lines to plastic bottles and random trash that eventually makes it to the ocean, or is dropped into the ocean by humans out on boats starts polluting the water and causes major harm to all ocean life.

Many cargo ships run through the ocean regularly and dump water from their boat. This water dumping is a culprit of some of the ocean pollution we see in our oceans. Water dumping could introduce non-native marine life to a new body of water which could cause significant damage to the natural Eco-system of the specific ocean area where the cargo ships dump the water.

Ocean Pollution

Water Pollution Activity

Gather up some materials such as a sensory table or plastic tub so that you can put water, pretend seashells, ocean animals and pretend plant life in the container. From there you’ll need Oil, plastic, food trash and anything else you could use to demonstrate what it’s like when ocean life is consumed with pollution like oil, dish soap, and plastic.

Watch a Documentary

There are many ocean life documentaries on Netflix. You can plan for a movie day where you sit with your children to watch a documentary about the ocean and marine animals. When the show is over, you can have a round table discussion on what they learned.

From there you could discuss ocean pollution facts and ask how your children think this could cause issues with ocean life.

In addition to creating an ocean pollution sensory bin, or watching a documentary you could discuss ocean pollution with your children and make a plan to help offset the pollutants.

Make a family plan to buy less plastic or to recycle more often. To refrain from using chemicals in your home and the garden so that you’re doing your part, as a family, to reduce ocean pollution.

You and your family can help save the ocean life that is dying off due to the plastic in the ocean and many other harmful pollutions that get into the ocean.