Celebrating World Octopus Day With Preschoolers

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One of the most interesting, intelligent, and oldest creatures on Earth is the octopus. World Octopus Day is celebrated on October 8th, hoping to make people aware of its existence, and celebrates its diversity, conservation, and biology.

To celebrate World Octopus Day with your preschoolers, you just have to create a unique lesson plan to teach them facts about this magnificent marine animal, read books about it and do activities related to it, to make it fun and educational.

To help you with your planning I am offering you suggestions and ideas of activities you can do with your children and a FREE World Octopus Day pack that includes Literacy, Math, Science, and Fine Motor activities, distributed in 22 pages. You can find it at the end of this post.

Celebrating World Octopus Day With Preschoolers

History of World Octopus Day

It is unknown who established this day, but the first World Octopus Day was celebrated on October 8, 2007, together with Cephalopod Awareness Day, to show appreciation for animals with eight legs.

Importance of World Octopus Day

For me, it is essential to know what animals exist on Earth and talk to our preschoolers about them, especially the ones that are endangered, to encourage our children to love nature and the desire to protect Planet Earth and its inhabitants.

Since there’re so many different animals, I think that World Octopus Day helps remind us that this amazing creature exists, and gives us an excuse to share facts about it hoping to stir a deep appreciation for it, which at the same time connects us with nature, and allow us to admire the wonders of it.

How to Celebrate World Octopus Day

There are many things you can do to celebrate World Octopus Day with your preschoolers. These are some ideas and suggestions that you can use:

Teach or review the name and sound of the letter Oo for octopus. Have the children copy, and/or trace the letter Oo and the word octopus. Have them find other words that start with the letter Oo.

Show your children a picture or a toy octopus. Have them count its legs. Have them choose different objects to form groups of 8 items.

Help your preschoolers with available tools to measure the smallest (2.5 cm) and largest octopus (30 feet).

Show your preschoolers videos of octopuses. Some of my favorites are: Octopus Opening a Jar to Get Dinner!, An Octopus’ Coconut Home, Huge Octopus Escapes Through Smallest Hole, and Octopus Steals Crab From Fisherman, which show the incredible intelligence and problem-solving abilities of these amazing animals.

Watch the documentary “My Octopus Teacher” on Netflix. It is very interesting and shows the unusual friendship between a filmmaker and an octopus in South Africa’s kelp forest, learning as the animal shares the mysteries of her world. You can see the official trailer HERE.

Take a field trip to your local aquarium or sea life reserve with your preschoolers, and their families. Looking at these creatures in person is the best way to get to know them. Here in Florida, we have the option to visit the Florida Aquarium in Tampa and SeaWorld in Orlando, where they have beautiful octopus specimens. Also, if you have the opportunity, go to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, USA, which is the largest aquarium in the world.

Find out if your local zoo, marine sanctuary, or aquatic park is holding special educational events about the octopus, and inform your preschooler’s families and friends about them, encouraging them to go.

Learn and teach your children about some of the different kinds of octopuses. You can find this information on octopusworlds.com.

Adopt an Octopus with your preschoolers. The World Wild Life Foundation (WWF) offers an adopt-an-octopus kit that you can purchase to fund its mission of protecting wild animals and their habitats. It includes a 12-inch plush octopus, a photo, an adoption certificate, a species information card, and a gift bag.

Have your preschoolers do octopus-related artwork. You can find 10 different ideas on kidsartncraft.com and 12 more on iheartcraftythings.com.

Invite your preschoolers to dress up as an octopus and have an “under the sea parade”, take some pictures and place them on your wall for parents to enjoy. You can even post the pictures on your social media sites, using the hashtags #OctopusDay and #WorldOctopusDay (don’t forget to cover your children’s faces, unless you get the permission of their parents).

Have the children dance to “Octopus’s Garden” by Ringo Starr.

Play a game dividing your preschoolers as octopuses in the playground. To do that, have groups of 4 children stand in a circle with their backs to each other and hook their arms together, to form a body with 8 legs. Have the “octopuses” walk from point A to point B. The octopus that reaches point B first wins the race.

Serve an octopus-shaped food, such as this Octopus Apple snack from sidetrackedsarah.com, Octopus-shaped Hot Dogs from imnotthenanny.com, Octopus Snack by briebrieblooms.com, and Strawberry Octopus by b-inspiredmama.com.

Facts About Octopuses

Octopuses are one of the oldest, most intelligent, interesting, and unique creatures on Earth. They’ve been in existence for more than 300 million years, according to the fossils that scientists have found. This means that they were here before the dinosaurs!

These are some of the most important facts you can teach your preschoolers:

Octopuses are mollusks of the order Octopoda and members of the class Cephalopoda, similar to squids, cuttlefish, and nautilus.
They have two eyes, and a beak, with its mouth present at the center point of the arms.
Octopuses have eight tentacles or arms, with suction cups at the bottom. Some use the two at the back of their body as legs to crawl and walk, and the other six to grab food and propel themselves through the water.
Octopuses have three hearts. Two for moving blood to the gills and the other for pumping blood through the rest of the body.
Their blood is blue, due to the presence of copper in the protein hemocyanin, which carries oxygen around their body.
Octopuses come in different colors, sizes, and shapes.
They often squirt ink and/or camouflage changing colors and textures to blend in with their surroundings, as a form of protection against predators.

You can find species of octopus in every ocean in the world. Some live in reefs, crevices, and shells in shallow waters of the sea, while others can be found thousands of meters in caves below the water’s surface.
The Giant Pacific Octopus is the largest and longest-living species. It can weigh around 45 to 60 pounds, but there are a few cases when some have reached 600 pounds.

Octopuses can regenerate. This means that if they lose an arm, they can grow it back.
They swim nearly 25 miles per hour for short distances blasting off by shooting water out of a tube called a siphon but usually move by slowly crawling on the ocean floor.
They are considered the third most intelligent animal on earth, after humans and dolphins, and the most intelligent of all the invertebrates. They have nine brains, with a central one that controls their nervous system and one in each arm, with a total of 500 million neurons, which allow different arms to do different tasks at the same time.
They are carnivorous and mainly eat fish, sharks, lobsters, shrimp, clams, birds, and even smaller species of octopus.
Since octopuses don’t have skeletons or shells, they can squeeze through very small openings.
The Blue-ringed Octopus is one of the deadliest creatures in the world. One bite can stop your breathing in 30 minutes if you don’t get medical attention. You can find it in Australia.

They only live around six months but the largest ones can reach five years, because males die shortly after they reproduce, and the females lay up to 400,000 eggs in a den, and die after hatching.
Two rare octopuses are the Glow Sucker Octopus which has tentacles that glow in the dark, and the Glass Octopus with a body that is almost entirely transparent.

There are over 300 known species of octopus in the world. In the video below, you can the ten most beautiful ones in the world.

Books About the Octopuses

Fill your library and the different centers with books about octopuses. If you don’t have many available, you can always find a lot at your local library or used bookstore. Of course, you can order them through my Amazon affiliate links by clicking the images of some recommended ones below.

Pin It For Later

If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable but want to save it for later, pin it to one of your Pinterest boards.

I hope you enjoy these ideas and help you have fun during the World Octopus Day celebration with your preschoolers. To get the FREE pack, you just have to click on the link below and put your information, for an immediate download.

Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.

Love,

P.D. Please let me know if any of these ideas worked for you, or if you think I need to add or replace something. My goal is to help you in any way I can.