Ocean Art!

Continuing with my ocean theme...here is an art project that the kids and I absolutely love!  First I read the Rainbow fish by Marcus Pfister and then the children color and paint their own rainbow fish or ocean scene with oil pastels and watercolors.

The first step I do is point out all of the colors on each page and ask the children after the read aloud which was their favorite and why?  Then I explain that we are going to make our own oceans and you can put in any ocean fish and sea creatures you want.  To do this project we use "special crayons" called oil pastels.  These are much brighter and they pop right off the page!  

After I the children draw what ever they want I explain that now we need to add blue water to make the sea creatures come alive and pop off the page.  The kids get a kick out of this and their eyes get huge when they see the colors resisting the water.  They usually all come up running and say "Look, look, mine is popping!"  I make sure to explain it needs to be blue so the water shows up and I do this project towards the end of the year because it does use a lot of the blue water color.

After they are done I use them to decorate our drama area "The Beach Cafe".  The kids love coming up to the pictures and seeing which one is theirs :)

Exploring the Ocean with Wave Bottles!

Since it is sunny in Seattle right now I thought I would share one of my favorite ocean projects that we make towards the end of the year.

For this project you will need:

empty water bottles; water, baby oil, funnel, blue food coloring; hot glue gun, several Rubbermaid containers or pans, plastic fish, seaweed, stickers, sand and sea shells.

Step 1:  Fill the water bottle 1/3 way full with water.

Step 2: Add 2-3 drops of blue food coloring

Step 3: Add some sand, sea shells, sea shells, and plastic fish to the water.

 

 

 Step 4: Using a funnel fill the rest of the bottle with baby oil. I ask parents to donate this as it helps with the cost of the project.  I think the parent purchased these at Walmart :)

 Step 5:   Place lid on the water bottle and decorate with stickers

Step 6: Hot glue (teacher only) lids to bottle so they don't leak.

I always have one or two parent helpers with this project, it just makes it so much easier to complete!  What fun ocean projects do you do for your class?