I read the book to the children and as we always do, we broke into age groups.
The younger students (ages 3-5) created a watercolor fish. The inspiration for this activity came from: There's A Dragon in my Art Room.They started by drawing their fish on white paper and tracing it with black marker. Then they used liquid watercolors (many of them had never used these before and they LOVED the vibrant colors that they were able to use for their fish).
They cut out their fish and glued them onto a background. We had some turquoise paper which worked nicely for an underwater scene. Then came the decorating. Glitter, foam shapes, tissue paper, sequins and GLUE were all made available to the children for their fish.
The next age group (6-8 yrs old) created Gyotaku fish prints. The inspiration for this activity came from That Artist Woman.They painted the fish (we did not use real fish for this, but I have heard that you can... we bought the rubber fish for this activity) with acrylic paint. The students then created 1 print on a piece of paper. This pulled most of the paint off of the fish. Then they used a piece of muslin to create a second print, pulling the rest of the paint off of the fish.
The last group of students (ages 9 and up), painted river rocks. I bought river rocks at Home Depot. The children were able to choose the rock that "spoke" to them. Some looked for a certain shape, others looked for certain coloring. It was interesting to see how they searched for their particular rocks. They used acrylic paint and created their own individual rocks. Since I had made sure to have plenty of rocks on hand, some children went home with 5-6 painted rocks.
