Celebrating Shark Week

“Dad! What are you doing? It’s Shark Week!”
-Dale, Step Brothers

Shark Week is an annual Discovery Channel week of programming that features shows focused on sharks. It presents information about these powerful creatures while providing an opportunity to see footage of them in the wild visually.

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The first time my kids discovered Shark Week, we happened to be on vacation at the beach with our friends. They were enthralled!

It was a unique experience to watch the majestic animals on television and then spend time in the ocean the next day. To look out at the unending body of water and know it was filled with the beasts you had viewed the previous evening is somewhat unnerving but also remarkable.

The ocean is a vast ecosystem filled with species we can only see through video recordings, so Shark Week is such a special yearly event. It provides the opportunity to view things we otherwise would never know existed.

Since that first encounter with Shark Week many years ago, we have made it a yearly celebration to honor the mysterious creatures of the sea.

Here are 5 things we do to celebrate Shark Week.

1. Choose Our Shows/Create a Schedule

The first thing we do is look at the schedule for the year and decide which programs we are most interested in watching.

2. Decorate

I love to decorate for events and holidays, including Shark Week. There are tons of ideas on Pinterest, and of course, you can buy premade decorations online or in stores, but we like to create our own art projects using plastic tablecloths, construction paper, crepe paper, and other household supplies.

For example, create an underwater doorway using strands of crepe paper. Cut strips, tape them to the door frame, and add a construction paper shark fin at the “surface of the water.”

Hang blue plastic tablecloths on your wall to form an ocean backdrop for extra ambiance. Add underwater creatures to complete the look.

Cover your table with a blue tablecloth. Add crepe paper, construction paper creatures, or stuffed animals to build an ocean tablescape.

Make surfboards with shark bites taken out of them. Build your own shark creations to hang around the room or from the ceiling.

3. Eat Delicious Food

No party is complete without yummy food. Here is an example of the menu for our Shark Week party.

*Appetizer: Shark-cuterie Board- Fill a tray with your favorite savory and sweet snacks to create a charcuterie board, but give it a Shark Week spin by making shark serving picks using toothpicks and the shark cutouts found on the free PDF printable below.

*Main Dish: “Sub”marine Sandwiches- Build a sub sandwich using your preferred ingredients. Include a side of Dorito’s “shark fins” and “water”melon.

“Sub”marine Sandwich, Dorito’s Shark Fins, “Water”melon

*Beverage: Shark Punch- Serve blue Hawaiian Punch “ocean water.” We add straws with paper shark cutouts taped to them (see the free shark-cuterie cutouts PDF printable below). You can also garnish with a gummy shark, but beware; they typically sink to the bottom of the drink.

*Dessert: Ocean Cake- Bake your favorite cake. Decorate to create an ocean scene. We use blue frosting for the water, ground-up graham crackers for the sand, gummy sharks, Teddy Grahams, Lifesavers Gummies, frosted graham crackers, and paper umbrellas.

4. Complete Shark Activities

Watching the Shark Week programming is entertainment in and of itself, but if you want something a little extra for your kiddos to do, consider having them complete my Shark Week Scavenger Hunt activity sheet or record facts in their own Shark Week Journal. Both are free printable PDFs and can be found at the end of this post.

*Check out my Shark Week Pinterest board for more shark activities, arts and crafts.

5. Learn More About Sharks

Shark Week may only last a week, but learning about sharks can be a year-round event. Want to see more sharks? Visit the live feed web cameras of aquariums across the country, such as the Oregon Coast Aquarium, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Georgia Aquarium, and Sharks in the Atlantic from explore.org, which is a website that has over 100 live streams of various animals.

Read nonfiction and fiction books about sharks. My post 20 Children’s Books About Sharks: Perfect for Shark Week is filled with suggestions.

View previous Shark Week episodes from years past.

Search “Sharks National Geographic” on YouTube for more videos on sharks.

Visit local museums that feature information about ocean creatures.

*Sharks* Exhibition
American Museum of Natural History

Shark Week may only be one week every summer, but it provides so much new information and a way for our family to spend time together. It is a week we look forward to every year.